Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous gamers have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, like the time he went through the title using only explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the whole world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a new save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This creates fresh issues, however. The merged file has a Link that did not obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that refuses to load some locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a bug that allows him to phase through the environment. Some would find these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The video edit of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them last several long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The final villain battle, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the player to use the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.