Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that impose special rules on a gameplay session. However, although numerous players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with zero stamina. A one-branch run, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is especially important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire world. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a new save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

That creates fresh problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the title that fails to open some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of items to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the world. A few would consider these means grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look painful. The video version of his quest spares the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to use the Master Sword as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. RIP.