Streaming Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he played the title using only bombs or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a new save file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes new issues, though. The fused save file has a Link that never acquired the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the title that fails to open certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of items to boost his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. A few would consider these means grounds to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still only a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

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