Twitch Personality Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply special rules on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with no stamina. A single stick run, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest tool in the entire world. But if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this character gains full endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.

That creates new issues, however. The merged file has a Link that never obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the game that fails to load some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that allows him to clip through the world. A few would find these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube version of his quest spares the audience endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone items during the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final strike, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.