Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while many gamers have tried to finish the game with just a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, like the time he played the game using only explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this character gains full endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That causes new issues, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to access 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 game that refuses to open some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a glitch that allows him to clip through the world. A few would find these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube version of his journey spares the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is still just a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, he does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.