Twitch Personality Spends 37 Straight Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of novel challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have attempted to finish the game with just a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the game with a single stick—meaning, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link acquires full endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

That causes fresh problems, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the game that fails to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that enables him to clip 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 player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further uses a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when some of them last several long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone items during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the player to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

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