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

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. However, although many gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a one branch—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he went through the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with no stamina. A single stick run, though, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to tell the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This creates new problems, though. The fused save file has a Link that never obtain the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the title that fails to load certain locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that allows Link to phase through the environment. Some would find these means grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through several of the game's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all only a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.