Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply special rules on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the very same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new save file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh issues, though. The fused save file has a Link that never obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the game that fails to load some areas. As with everything else, he has a technical 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

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the Link he transfers between universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is still a weak item that renders encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. A few would find these means grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat many of the game's main enemies, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take several hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible stick is still just a stick. He is unable to always clone items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over 1,000 users in his live stream. Rest in peace.