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

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. However, while numerous gamers have attempted to finish the game with only a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the game with a one stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the title using only bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch run, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this character gains maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable build of the game that fails to load certain locations. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot damage any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the Link he pulls between universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a bug that allows him to phase through the world. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further uses a penalty of sorts stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The video edit of his quest spares the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all just a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.