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

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, like the time he went through the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with no energy. A one-branch run, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest tool in the entire world. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this Link acquires maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a third game file that merges the states of the original two.

This causes fresh issues, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to open some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the environment. A few would find these means reason to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all just a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.