Twitch Personality Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that impose special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while many gamers have tried to finish the game with just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, like the instance he played the game using only bombs or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires full stamina and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a third save file that merges the states of the first two files.

That causes fresh problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the title that fails to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is still a ineffective item that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables him to phase through the environment. A few would consider these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He further uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He is unable to always clone objects midway the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, he does overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

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