Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of novel challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have tried to finish the game using just a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the game with a one stick—meaning, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he went through the game solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character gains full stamina and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a third save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates fresh problems, though. The fused file has a Link that never obtain the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to load some areas. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is still a ineffective item that renders encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of items to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that enables him to phase through the environment. Some would consider these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of the game's main enemies, but the battles appear grueling. The video edit of his quest spares the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.