Twitch Star Dedicates 37 Straight Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single 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 creative challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although many players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a one branch—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with no energy. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole game. But if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this Link gains full endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a new save file that merges the states of the first two files.

This causes fresh issues, though. The merged save file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the title that fails to open certain areas. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear issue, as the Link he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. Some would find these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple long hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still only a stick. He is unable to always clone items during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the player to use the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.