Streaming Personality Spends 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many gamers have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he aimed to beat the game with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and pauses partway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new game file that merges the states of the original two.

That creates fresh issues, though. The fused save file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the title that fails to load certain areas. As with other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the Link he transfers across universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of items to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that enables Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 straight. The final villain battle, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily clone objects midway the battle.

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 use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer banned more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.