Streaming Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many gamers have attempted to finish the game using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the very same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with no stamina. A one-branch run, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the entire world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this character gains full endurance and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

That causes fresh problems, however. The merged file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that refuses to load some areas. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of items to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that allows Link to phase through the world. Some would find these methods grounds to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through several of the game's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them take several hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily clone items during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the user to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. RIP.