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

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the game with a single stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and initial starting area, and this Link acquires full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a third game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the game that refuses to open certain areas. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that renders encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables him to phase through the environment. Some would find these means reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still just a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, he does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the user to use the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed over 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.