Streaming Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a single stick—specifically, the very same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, like the instance he went through the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch run, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this character gains maximum stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This creates new problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the title that fails to load certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is still a ineffective weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit 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 also employs a bug that allows Link to phase through the world. A few would consider these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to get through several of the game's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The video edit of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all only a stick. He is unable to always duplicate objects during the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the user to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.