Streaming Personality Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of creative challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many gamers have attempted to complete the game with only a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he went through the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This causes fresh issues, however. The fused file has a Link that did not obtain the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the title that fails to open certain areas. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. Some would consider these methods grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He also uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of the game's bosses, but the battles look painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 hours. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all just a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, he does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.