Twitch Personality Spends 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many gamers have tried to finish the game with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the very same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this character acquires full endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new save file that combines the states of the original two.

That causes new problems, however. The fused file has a Link that never obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that fails to open some areas. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the Link he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of items to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would find these means reason to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last several hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still only a stick. He can't necessarily clone items during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.