Streaming Personality Spends 37 Straight Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: 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 exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous players have tried to complete the game with only a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, like the instance he went through the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this character gains maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a new game file that combines the states of the original two.

That causes new issues, though. The fused file has a Link that never acquired the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the game that fails to open some areas. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the character he pulls across universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is still a weak item that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful supply of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that allows Link to clip through the environment. Some would consider these means reason to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The video edit of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take several hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily clone items during the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the user to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.