Twitch Star Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply special rules on a playthrough. However, although many gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single stick—specifically, the very same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, such as the instance he played the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with zero stamina. A single stick run, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple explanation is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” file where he progresses normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That causes new issues, though. The merged save file has a Link that never obtain the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the game that refuses to load certain areas. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables Link to phase through the world. Some would find these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He also uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all just a stick. He is unable to always duplicate objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game compels the player to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.