Streaming Star Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose unique rules on a playthrough. However, while many gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the instance he played the game using only explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This creates new issues, however. The fused save file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the game that fails to load some locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a glitch that enables Link to phase through the environment. A few would consider these methods reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to defeat many of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The video version of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.