Twitch Personality Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while 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 such challenge runs, like the instance he played the game using only bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with zero stamina. A one-branch run, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires full stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates fresh issues, however. The merged save file has a Link that never obtain the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an unstable version of the title that refuses to load some locations. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the character he transfers between universes is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to boost his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the world. Some would find these means reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still only a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate items during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the user to use the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.