Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <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 run out of creative challenge runs that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous gamers have tried to complete the game using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the game using only bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with no energy. A one-branch run, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially important when working with the most fragile tool in the whole world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this character acquires maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new game file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This creates new issues, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an unstable version of the game that fails to load some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that enables him to phase through the world. Some would find these means grounds to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take several hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.