Streaming Star Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a playthrough. However, while many players have tried to complete the game using only a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with no stamina. A single stick run, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this character gains full stamina and health. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a new game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That causes new problems, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that never acquired 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 fails to load certain areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory 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 game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the Link he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of items to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the world. Some would consider these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all just a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

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