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

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although many gamers have attempted to finish the game with just a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he went through the title using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with no energy. A single stick playthrough, though, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially important when working with the most fragile tool in the entire game. But if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character gains maximum endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This creates new problems, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that refuses to open some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak item that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables Link to phase through the world. A few would consider these methods grounds to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The video edit of his journey spares the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned over 1,000 users in his live stream. Rest in peace.