Streaming Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting 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 debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. However, while many players have attempted to complete the game using just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the game with a single stick—meaning, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he played the game solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability system, which is especially important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this character acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third save file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates fresh issues, though. The fused file has a Link that did not obtain the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the title that refuses to load some locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a ineffective item that renders battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that allows Link to phase through the world. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video edit of his quest spares the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last several hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.