Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that impose unique rules on a playthrough. However, while many gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a one branch—meaning, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the game using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character acquires full stamina and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a new save file that merges the states of the original two.

This creates new issues, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the title that fails to load some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, likely to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of items to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that enables Link to phase through the world. A few would find these methods reason to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat many of the game's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The video edit of his quest spares the audience endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last several hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 straight. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still only a stick. He is unable to always clone objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.