Streaming Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous gamers have attempted to finish the game using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the game with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when working with the most fragile tool in the entire world. But if the stick shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this Link gains full stamina and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates fresh problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the title that fails to load some locations. Like other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is programmed so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the character he transfers between universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful supply of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He also implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, establishing an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still just a stick. He is unable to always duplicate items during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the player to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.