Streaming Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only 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 novel challenge runs that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the game with a one stick—meaning, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially important when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character gains maximum stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a third save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

That creates fresh issues, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the title that refuses to open some locations. Like other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of items to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would consider these methods reason to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of the game's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The video version of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone items during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.