Streaming Star Spends 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. However, although numerous gamers have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the game with a one stick—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest tool in the entire world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate 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 real save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this character gains full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That causes fresh issues, though. The merged file has a Link that did not obtain the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable version of the game that refuses to open some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders 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 plentiful supply of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that allows Link to phase through the world. A few would consider these means reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further uses a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The video edit of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all only a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. 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 what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer banned more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.