Twitch Star Dedicates 37 Straight Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. However, although numerous players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the game with a one stick—meaning, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with zero energy. A one-branch run, though, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this character acquires maximum endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a third game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That causes fresh problems, however. The fused save file has a Link that never obtain the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to open certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the character he transfers across universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that allows Link to phase through the world. Some would consider these methods reason to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them take several long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He can't necessarily clone items during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer banned over 1,000 people in his live stream. Rest in peace.