Twitch Personality Spends 37 Straight 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, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous gamers have tried to complete the game with just a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a single stick—meaning, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the time he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch run, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially important when working with the most fragile tool in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character gains maximum endurance and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a third save file that merges the states of the original two.

This causes fresh problems, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the game that fails to open some areas. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the Link he pulls between universes is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is still a ineffective item that renders battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful supply of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a glitch that allows Link to phase through the world. A few would consider these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all only a stick. He can't always clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.