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

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while many players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a one stick—meaning, the very same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he played the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with no energy. A one-branch run, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the stick shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this character gains full stamina and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a third save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

That causes new issues, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the game that refuses to load certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, likely to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of items to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that allows Link to phase through the world. A few would find these methods reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take several hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone items during the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 people in his live stream. Rest in peace.