Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a gameplay session. However, although numerous gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the game with a one branch—meaning, the very same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he went through the game solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire durability system, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete 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 impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a third game file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the game that refuses to load some locations. As with everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective item that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows Link to phase through the environment. Some would find these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The video version of his quest spares the viewer sit through the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last several hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone items during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.