Streaming Star Spends 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous gamers have tried to finish the game with only a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, like the instance he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A single stick run, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, 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 PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh issues, though. The fused file has a Link that never obtain the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the game that refuses to load some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that allows him to phase through the world. Some would consider these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to get through several of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all only a stick. He is unable to always clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over a thousand people in his live stream. RIP.