Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a single stick—meaning, the very same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with zero energy. A single stick run, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole world. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link gains full stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a new game file that combines the states of the first two files.

This causes fresh issues, though. The merged file has a Link that never obtain the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the game that refuses to open some areas. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is still a ineffective item that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful supply of items to boost his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a glitch that enables Link to clip through the environment. Some would find these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last several hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all just a stick. He is unable to always duplicate objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, 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 removed over a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.