Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Conquer <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 challenge runs that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he went through the title using only explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link acquires full stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the title that refuses to load certain locations. Like 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 software midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear issue, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is still a weak item that renders encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would find these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further uses a penalty of sorts stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The YouTube version of his journey spares the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still only a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone items during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final strike, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.