Streaming Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he went through the title using only bombs or the attempt where he aimed to beat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates 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 first tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum stamina and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the states of the original two.

This causes new problems, though. The merged file has a Link that did not obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the title that fails to open certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to clip through the world. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear grueling. The video version of his quest spares the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.