Twitch Star Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a playthrough. However, although many players have attempted to finish the game with just a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with zero energy. A one-branch run, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this Link gains full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That causes fresh issues, however. The merged file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending 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 version 1.0, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective item that makes encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. Some would consider these means grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last several hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate items during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

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