Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while many players have attempted to complete the game using just a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a third save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates new problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the game that refuses to load certain locations. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the Link he pulls across universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would find these means grounds to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look painful. The video version of his quest spares the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all just a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.