Streaming Personality Spends 37 Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to beat the game with a single stick—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he played the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with no energy. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this character acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new game file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes new problems, however. The fused save file has a Link that did not acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that refuses to load some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is still a ineffective weapon that renders encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He further uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all just a stick. He is unable to always duplicate items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the player to use the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.