Streaming Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while many players have tried to complete the game with just a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he went through the title solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with no energy. A one-branch run, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character gains full endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates new problems, however. The merged file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the title that refuses to load some locations. Like other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he transfers across universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that renders encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these methods grounds to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear grueling. The video edit of his journey spares the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last several long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a stick. He can't always clone items during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 users in his live stream. Rest in peace.