Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while many players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, like the time he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole world. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This causes new problems, though. The fused save file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the title that fails to open certain areas. As with everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the Link he pulls across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a glitch that allows Link to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The video edit of his quest spares the viewer endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take several long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate items midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.