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

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a playthrough. However, although many players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. But if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a third game file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This causes fresh problems, though. The fused save file has a Link that did not acquired the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the title that fails to load some areas. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the character he transfers between universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that enables him to phase through the environment. Some would find these means grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also uses a penalty of sorts stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, establishing an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take several hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all only a piece of wood. He can't always clone items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

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