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

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose special rules on a playthrough. However, although many players have attempted to complete the game using only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the title solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” file where he progresses normally, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the states of the original two.

This creates new issues, however. The fused file has a Link that never obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that refuses to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the character he pulls across universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a bug that enables him to phase through the environment. Some would consider these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube edit of his quest spares the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take several hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still only a stick. He can't always duplicate objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.