Streaming Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many gamers have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he played the game using only bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with zero energy. A one-branch run, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” file where he progresses normally, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this character gains maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene 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 conditions of the first two files.

That causes fresh issues, however. The fused file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the title that fails to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of items to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows Link to phase through the world. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to get through many of the game's bosses, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them last several hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 hours. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate items during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.