Twitch Star Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a single stick—meaning, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he went through the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with zero energy. A one-branch run, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This causes fresh issues, however. The merged save file has a Link that never acquired the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the title that refuses to load some locations. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear issue, as the character he pulls across universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the world. A few would find these methods grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat many of the game's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube edit of his quest spares the audience endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last several hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still only a stick. He can't always clone objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the player to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.