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

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. However, while numerous gamers have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a single stick—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the title using only bombs or the attempt where he aimed to beat the game with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is especially relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this character acquires full endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third game file that merges the states of the original two.

That causes new problems, though. The merged file has a Link that never acquired the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an unstable version of the game that refuses to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the character he pulls across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of items to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would consider these means reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through several of the game's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The video edit of his journey spares the viewer endure the entire fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last several long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all just a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

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