Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that impose special rules on a playthrough. However, although numerous gamers have attempted to complete the game with only a wooden stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the very same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he went through the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole world. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple answer is exploits. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a third save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This creates fresh issues, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to open some areas. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The branch is still a weak weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful supply of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that enables him to phase through the environment. A few would consider these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube edit of his quest spares the audience endure the entire fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all only a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the player to use the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a stick-only run. 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.