Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a playthrough. However, although numerous players have attempted to complete the game using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a one branch—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the title using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with zero stamina. A single stick run, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a new game file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates new issues, however. The merged file has a Link that never acquired the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that refuses to load certain locations. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the character he transfers between universes is the one from the start of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a weak weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a glitch that enables him to phase through the environment. Some would consider these means grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through several of the game's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video edit of his journey spares the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still just a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.