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

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique rules on a playthrough. However, while many gamers have attempted to complete the game with only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the game with a single stick—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the title using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains full stamina and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes fresh problems, however. The merged save file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the title that refuses to load certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he pulls between universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that enables Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look painful. The video edit of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still only a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over a thousand people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.