Twitch Star Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to finish the game using only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, like the time he played the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to beat the game with zero energy. A single stick run, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the whole game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts partway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a new game file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This causes new problems, however. The merged file has a Link that did not obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the game that refuses to open some areas. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is still a ineffective item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that allows him to clip through the environment. A few would find these means grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube version of his journey spares the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take several hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still only a stick. He can't always clone items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.