Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of creative challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a single stick—specifically, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the instance he played the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with no stamina. A single stick run, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and initial starting area, and this Link acquires full endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a third save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

That creates fresh problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to open certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of items to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that enables him to phase through the environment. Some would consider these methods grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 hours. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He can't always clone items during the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over a thousand people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.