Streaming Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous players have attempted to complete the game with just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single stick—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the title using only bombs or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with no energy. A one-branch run, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire world. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That causes new problems, though. The fused file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that refuses to load some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the wear issue, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a ineffective item that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of items to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a glitch that enables Link to phase through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear grueling. The video edit of his quest spares the viewer endure the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an incredible 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. RIP.