Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Beat <em>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 exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the game with a one stick—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, like the instance he played the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the game with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a new game file that combines the states of the original two.

This causes new issues, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the game that refuses to open certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the Link he transfers between universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows Link to phase through the world. Some would find these means grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still only a stick. He can't always clone items during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the player to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.