Streaming Personality Spends 37 Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a playthrough. However, although numerous players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains full stamina and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This causes new issues, though. The fused file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the title that fails to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. A few would consider these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of the game's bosses, but the battles look painful. The video version of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last several hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still only a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.