Streaming Personality Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. However, while many players have tried to finish the game using only a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, like the time he went through the title solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the story with no energy. A single stick run, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this character acquires full endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a third save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That causes new problems, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to load some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the software midway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak item that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a glitch that enables Link to clip through the environment. A few would consider these methods grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them take several hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all just a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.