Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many gamers have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the title using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with zero energy. A single stick run, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially important when working with the weakest tool in the whole world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character gains maximum stamina and health. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates new issues, though. The merged file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it 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 early version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. Some would find these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the battles appear grueling. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them last several long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over a thousand people in his live stream. RIP.