Streaming Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the time he played the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to beat the story with no stamina. A single stick run, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire world. But if the stick shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link acquires full stamina and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and pauses midway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third game file that combines the conditions of the original two.

That creates fresh problems, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that fails to open some locations. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the Link he pulls between universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful supply of items to improve his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that enables him to phase through the environment. Some would find these methods reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of the game's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the viewer endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible stick is still just a piece of wood. He can't always clone items during 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 player to use the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.