Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose special rules on a playthrough. Yet, while many gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single stick—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he went through the game using only explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with zero energy. A one-branch run, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. 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 affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

That creates new problems, however. The merged save file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the game that fails to load certain areas. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is still a weak weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the environment. Some would consider these means reason to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban one fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not 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 video version of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take several hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 hours. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all only a stick. He can't always clone items during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.