Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>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 run out of novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while numerous players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single stick—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he went through the title using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the game with zero energy. A one-branch run, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this character gains maximum endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That creates fresh issues, however. The merged file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the game that refuses to load certain areas. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that allows him to clip through the environment. A few would find these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, establishing an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The video edit of his journey spares the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.