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

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to complete the game using just a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a single stick—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no energy. A single stick run, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability system, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire world. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full stamina and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a third save file that merges the states of the original two.

That creates new issues, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the title that refuses to open certain areas. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is still a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of items to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables him to phase through the world. Some would consider these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take several hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over a thousand people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.