Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Hours 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 arrived, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while many gamers have attempted to complete the game with just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the game solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with zero stamina. A single stick run, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a third game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That causes new problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the game that fails to load some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is still a ineffective item that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would find these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube version of his journey spares the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects midway the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, he does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.