Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a playthrough. However, while numerous gamers have tried to complete the game using 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 famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the title using only bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with zero energy. A single stick run, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest weapon in the whole world. But if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum endurance and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new game file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This causes new problems, though. The fused file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an unstable version of the title that refuses to open some areas. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the Link he transfers between universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is still a weak item that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of items to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that enables him to clip through the world. A few would find these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The video version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take several long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.