Streaming Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, like the instance he went through the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with no stamina. A one-branch run, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire world. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link gains full stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates new issues, however. The fused file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the game that fails to open certain areas. As with everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear issue, as the character he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is still a ineffective item that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of items to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables Link to clip through the environment. A few would find these means reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The video version of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still just a stick. He is unable to always clone items during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over a thousand people in his live stream. RIP.