Twitch Star Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many players have attempted to finish the game with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to clear the game with a single stick—specifically, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he aimed to beat the game with no energy. A one-branch run, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile tool in the entire game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this character acquires maximum endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third game file that combines the states of the original two.

This creates fresh issues, though. The fused save file has a Link that never acquired the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the title that refuses to load certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that allows him to phase through the environment. Some would consider these means grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He also uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of the game's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The video version of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone items during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.