Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a playthrough. However, although many gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the game with a one branch—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with no energy. A one-branch run, though, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the stick breaks, 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 parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates new problems, however. The fused file has a Link that never obtain the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the game that refuses to load some locations. Like other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a glitch that allows Link to phase through the world. A few would find these methods grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The video edit of his quest spares the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take several hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.