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

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, while many gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the title using only bombs or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch run, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile tool in the entire game. But if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a third save file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates fresh issues, though. The fused file has a Link that never acquired the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to load certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the character he transfers between universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. Some would find these methods grounds to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The video edit of his quest spares the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game compels the user to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over 1,000 people in his live stream. Rest in peace.