Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven 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 debuted, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a one branch—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the game using only bombs or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with zero energy. A one-branch run, though, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the whole game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” file where he progresses normally, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires full endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This creates new problems, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to load some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables Link to phase through the world. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still only a stick. He can't always duplicate objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the user to use the Master Sword as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow banned over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.