Twitch Star Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while many players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single stick—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero energy. A one-branch run, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this Link acquires maximum stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a third save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This creates fresh issues, however. The fused file has a Link that never acquired the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the game midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the character he transfers across universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is still a weak weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables him to clip through the environment. A few would consider these means reason to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take several hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The final villain showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still only a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed over a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.