Streaming Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, while many players have attempted to finish the game with only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a single stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this character acquires maximum stamina and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third save file that merges the states of the original two.

This creates fresh issues, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the title that fails to load certain areas. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is still a weak weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the world. A few would consider these means reason to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take several hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone items during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than 1,000 users in his live stream. Rest in peace.