Streaming Personality Spends 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous gamers have tried to finish the game using only a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the title using only bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A single stick run, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole world. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a third game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable build of the game that fails to open certain areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning 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 beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is still a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. Some would consider these means reason to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The video edit of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the entire fights, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still only a stick. He can't always duplicate items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.