Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many gamers have attempted to finish the game using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the very same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the story with zero energy. A one-branch run, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially important when working with the weakest weapon in the whole world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third save file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates new issues, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the title that fails to open some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the character he transfers between universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number of items to boost his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a bug that enables him to phase through the environment. A few would consider these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his quest spares the audience endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still just a stick. He can't always clone objects during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, he manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.