Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have tried to complete the game with only a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the title solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a new save file that combines the states of the original two.

This creates new issues, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable version of the game that refuses to open certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all possible friction. The branch is still a ineffective item that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would consider these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look painful. The video edit of his quest spares the audience endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last several long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which erases Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so technically, it's not completely a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

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