Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of creative challenge runs that impose special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous gamers have attempted to finish the game using just a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a one branch—meaning, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The full story, 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 creates a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character gains full stamina and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a new game file that combines the states of the original two.

This causes new issues, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit addresses 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 technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the character he transfers across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a weak weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the world. A few would find these means grounds to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the entire fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, he manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the user to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.