Streaming Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Beat <em>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 arrived, fans would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a playthrough. However, while many gamers have tried to finish the game with just a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he went through the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A single stick playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile tool in the entire world. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” file where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains full endurance and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That creates fresh issues, though. The fused file has a Link that never acquired the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the title that refuses to load some areas. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is still a weak weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the entire fights, which is a blessing when some of them last several hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which erases Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all only a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the game compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.