Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous gamers have tried to complete the game with only a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he went through the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with no stamina. A single stick run, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest tool in the whole world. But if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The full answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full endurance and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts partway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This causes fresh issues, however. The merged file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the game that refuses to open certain locations. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a glitch that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would find these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look 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 hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items during the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he does defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than a thousand people in his live stream. RIP.