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

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, while many players have attempted to finish the game with only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to beat the game with a one stick—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the game using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire game. But if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this Link acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

That causes fresh issues, though. The fused file has a Link that never obtain the capability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that refuses to load some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he pulls between universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful supply of items to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the environment. A few would find these means grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The video edit of his quest spares the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is still only a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than 1,000 people in his live stream. Rest in peace.