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

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many gamers have tried to finish the game using just a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a single stick—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially important when working with the weakest weapon in the whole world. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains full stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That creates new issues, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that fails to open certain locations. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability problem, 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 ineffective item that makes battles 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 supply of items to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a glitch that enables him to clip through the world. Some would find these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to get through several of the game's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last several hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The final villain showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all only a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the player to use the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

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