Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, like the time he went through the game solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with zero stamina. A one-branch run, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” file where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this character gains full stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third save file that merges the states of the original two.

This creates fresh issues, however. The merged file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the game that refuses to open some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the Link he transfers between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eradicates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of items to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables him to clip through the world. Some would consider these means reason to question the validity 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 penalty of sorts stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He can't always clone objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the final strike, so technically, it's not completely a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer banned over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.