Twitch Star Dedicates 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply unique rules on a playthrough. However, while numerous players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the whole world. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum stamina and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a third save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This causes new problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the game that refuses to load certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is still a ineffective item that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that allows him to phase through the world. Some would find these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also uses a penalty of sorts stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The video version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned over 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.