Streaming Star Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single branch—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with no stamina. A single stick run, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a new game file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This causes new issues, though. The fused save file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the game that fails to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of items to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a glitch that enables him to clip through the environment. A few would find these means grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video version of his quest doesn't make the viewer endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last several hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed over 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.