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

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while many players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This creates fresh problems, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the title that refuses to load certain areas. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a bug that allows Link to phase through the world. A few 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 entertain his audience. He further implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The video version of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate items during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

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