Streaming Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, like the time he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This creates new problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the title that fails to load certain locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls across universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a bug that allows him to phase through the world. A few would find these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take several long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily clone items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.