Streaming Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, while many players have attempted to finish the game using only a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a single stick—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link gains full stamina and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new save file that combines the states of the first two files.

That creates new problems, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the game that refuses to load certain areas. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the wear issue, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that allows Link to clip through the environment. A few would consider these means reason to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear grueling. The video edit of his quest spares the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is still only a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer banned more than 1,000 people in his live stream. Rest in peace.