Streaming Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Attempting 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 arrived, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although numerous gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, like the instance he played the game using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates fresh problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the title that fails to load certain locations. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is still a ineffective weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the environment. A few would find these methods grounds to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last several hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all just a stick. He is unable to always clone objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer banned over a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.