Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. However, although many players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the instance he went through the game using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with zero energy. A one-branch run, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, 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 real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a third game file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This causes new issues, however. The fused file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to open some areas. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot damage any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the Link he transfers across universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables him to phase through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The final villain showdown, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over 1,000 people in his live stream. Rest in peace.