Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply unique rules on a playthrough. However, although many players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the game using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this Link 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 stick file. The system gets confused and creates a new game file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh issues, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the game that refuses to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the character he transfers between universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is still a weak item that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that enables Link to clip through the environment. A few would find these means reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a stick. He is unable to always duplicate objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than 1,000 users in his live stream. Rest in peace.