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

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have tried to finish the game using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the instance he went through the game solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with no energy. A single stick run, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this character gains full stamina and health. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh problems, however. The fused save file has a Link that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the game that refuses to open some locations. Like other obstacles, 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 midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the character he transfers between universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is still a ineffective item that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would find these means reason to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The video version of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. RIP.