Streaming Star Dedicates 37 Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while many players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single stick—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the title using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest tool in the entire world. But if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates new issues, though. The merged save file has a Link that never acquired the capability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to load certain locations. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows him to clip through the environment. Some would consider these methods reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The video edit of his journey spares the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take several long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. RIP.