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

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose special rules on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous players have attempted to complete the game with only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a one stick—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially important when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character gains full endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This creates fresh issues, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable version of the game that fails to open certain areas. As with everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that allows him to phase through the environment. Some 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 safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate objects midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the user to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.