Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although many gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he went through the title solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero stamina. A single stick run, though, seems unfeasible 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 especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character gains full endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That causes new issues, though. The merged file has a Link that never obtain the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the title that fails to open some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number of items to boost his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a glitch that enables him to clip through the environment. A few would consider these means reason to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through several of the game's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The video edit of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all just a stick. He is unable to always clone items during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.