Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many players have tried to complete the game using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the game with a one branch—meaning, the very same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he went through the title using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with zero stamina. A single stick run, though, seems impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire world. But if the stick shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and pauses midway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates fresh problems, however. The merged file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the title that fails to load certain areas. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear issue, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of consumables to boost 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 to my view, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to get through many of the game's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, he manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.