Streaming Personality Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although many gamers have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a new save file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh issues, however. The merged file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that fails to open some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he transfers between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a weak weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to clip through the environment. A few would consider these means grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through several of the game's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last several hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still just a stick. He can't always clone items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned over 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.