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

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single branch—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he went through the game using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the game with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character gains maximum endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a third game file that combines the states of the original two.

This causes new problems, however. The merged save file has a Link that never acquired the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the title that refuses to load some locations. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the character he transfers across universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that renders encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number 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 world. A few would find these means reason 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 entertain his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The video version of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them last several hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer banned more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.