Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although many gamers have attempted to finish the game with only a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. But if the stick shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a third save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

That creates new problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that refuses to open certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that enables him to clip through the environment. Some would find these methods grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The video edit of his journey spares the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last several long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all only a stick. He can't always clone items during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to wield 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 removed more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.