Twitch Personality Spends 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a playthrough. However, although many gamers have tried to finish the game with just a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the game using only bombs or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with no energy. A one-branch run, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole game. But if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this character gains maximum stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This creates new issues, though. The merged save file has a Link that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the game that refuses to load certain areas. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of items to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the world. Some would consider these means grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look painful. The video version of his quest spares the viewer endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow banned over 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.