Streaming Personality Spends 37 Straight Attempting 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 exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the instance he went through the game using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with no energy. A single stick playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link gains maximum stamina and hearts. 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 generates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to load certain locations. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the Link he pulls across universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of items to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the world. A few would consider these means reason to question 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 implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat many of the game's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The video version of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all just a stick. He is unable to always duplicate objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer banned more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.