Streaming Personality Spends 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while many gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, like the time he played the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with no stamina. A single stick run, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This creates new problems, however. The merged save file has a Link that never obtain the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the title that fails to load some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the Link he pulls across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a bug that enables him to phase through the world. Some would find these means reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them take several long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.