Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although many players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new save file that combines the states of the original two.

That causes fresh issues, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the game that fails to load certain areas. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that allows him to phase through the world. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The video edit of his journey spares the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The final villain 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 midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.