Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many gamers have attempted to finish the game using just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with no stamina. A single stick run, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. But if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this character gains full endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new game file that combines the states of the original two.

This creates fresh problems, however. The merged file has a Link that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the title that fails to load some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that enables him to phase through the world. A few would find these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest spares the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when some of them last several hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all only a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate items during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed over a thousand people in his live stream. RIP.