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

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while many players have tried to finish the game using only a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he went through the game solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with zero energy. A single stick run, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this Link acquires full stamina and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third save file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes new issues, however. The fused save file has a Link that did not acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that fails to load certain areas. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to damage any tools he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would consider these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The video version of his quest spares the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily clone items during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than 1,000 people in his live stream. Rest in peace.