Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of creative challenge runs that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. However, although numerous players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the very same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he went through the title using only explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the story with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple explanation is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this character gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new game file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

That causes fresh issues, however. The fused save file has a protagonist 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 relying on an unstable version of the title that refuses to open certain locations. As with other obstacles, 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 starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he cannot break 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 gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is still a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that allows him to phase through the environment. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further uses a penalty of sorts stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The video edit of his journey spares the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take several hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to use the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over 1,000 users in his live stream. Rest in peace.