Streaming Star Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single branch—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with zero energy. A single stick run, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. But if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this Link acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That creates fresh issues, though. The fused save file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable build of the game that refuses to open some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the character he pulls across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful supply of items to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all only a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.