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 debuted, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while numerous gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with no stamina. A single stick run, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” file where he progresses normally, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this character acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a third save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates fresh problems, however. The merged save file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that refuses to open certain areas. As with other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the character he transfers across universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is still a weak item that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to question the validity 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 implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game compels the player to use the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.