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

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many gamers have tried to finish the game with only a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he went through the game solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. 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 stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes fresh issues, though. The fused file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the game that refuses to load some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the Link he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful supply of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a glitch that enables him to phase through the environment. A few would find these means grounds to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to get through several of the game's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video edit of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does overcome 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 completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.