Twitch Star Spends 37 Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many players have tried to complete the game with only a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the instance he played the title using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link gains full endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a third game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This creates fresh issues, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to load certain areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to clip through the environment. A few would find these means reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an incredible 23 straight. The final villain showdown, which erases Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 users in his live stream. Rest in peace.