Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous players have tried to finish the game with only a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he went through the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with no energy. A single stick run, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile tool in the entire world. But if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link acquires full stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh problems, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to open certain areas. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any tools he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls between universes is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also makes use of a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. A few would find these means grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He further implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them last several hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all only a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the user to wield the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.