Streaming Personality Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to clear the game with a single branch—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the time he went through the title using only explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero energy. A one-branch run, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this character acquires full endurance and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a third game file that combines the conditions of the original two.

That causes new problems, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the game that refuses to open certain locations. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful supply of items to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the environment. Some would consider these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, establishing an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 straight. The final villain battle, which erases Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all just a stick. He can't always clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer banned more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.