Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous gamers have attempted to finish the game using just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he went through the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with no energy. A single stick run, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link gains maximum stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates new issues, however. The fused file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the title that refuses to open certain areas. As with everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective item that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables him to phase through the world. Some would find these methods grounds to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of the game's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 straight. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all only a stick. He can't always clone items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

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