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

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the game with a one branch—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the game with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link gains full stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new game file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh problems, however. The fused save file has a Link that did not acquired the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that refuses to load certain locations. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the Link he pulls between 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 still a ineffective weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The final villain showdown, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. RIP.