Twitch Star Spends 37 Hours Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: 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 debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although many gamers have tried to finish the game with just a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the game solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A single stick run, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest tool in the entire game. But if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates new issues, though. The merged save file has a Link that never acquired the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the title that fails to load some areas. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the Link he pulls between universes 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 item that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of items to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these means grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, 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 more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.