Streaming Personality Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the very same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, like the instance he went through the game solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero stamina. A single stick run, however, seems impossible 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 especially important when working with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character gains maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a new save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

That causes new problems, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the title that refuses to open some areas. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to boost his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the environment. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear grueling. The video version of his quest spares the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take several hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still just a stick. He can't necessarily clone items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.