Twitch Star Dedicates 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to beat the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the game solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with zero energy. A single stick run, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile tool in the entire world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a new game file that merges the states of the original two.

This causes fresh problems, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to open certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he transfers across universes is the one from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful supply of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that allows Link to phase through the environment. Some would find these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The video version of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the user to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.