Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply special rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the title using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with no energy. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile tool in the entire game. But if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires full stamina and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third save file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates new problems, though. The merged file has a Link that never obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that refuses to open some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the character he transfers across universes is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that allows Link to phase through the environment. Some would consider these methods reason to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them last several hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.