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

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although many players have tried to finish the game using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to clear the game with a single stick—specifically, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he played the title using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest weapon in the whole world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and initial starting area, and this Link acquires full stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a new save file that combines the states of the original two.

This causes new problems, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that refuses to load some locations. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that allows Link to clip through the environment. Some would find these means reason to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take several long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.