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

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous players have attempted to finish the game with just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he played the title using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with no stamina. A single stick run, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple answer is exploits. The complete story, 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 affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the intro and initial starting area, and this Link gains full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That causes fresh problems, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the game that refuses to load some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he transfers across universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of items to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the world. A few would consider these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take several long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still only a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate items midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.