Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the game with a single stick—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the story with no stamina. A one-branch run, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this character acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third save file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes fresh problems, however. The fused file has a Link that never acquired the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the game that refuses to load certain areas. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He also uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look painful. The video version of his journey spares the audience endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last several hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to use the legendary weapon 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, the streamer banned over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.