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

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many gamers have attempted to complete the game with only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a single stick—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he went through the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new game file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, though. The merged save file has a Link that did not obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the game that fails to open certain areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of items to boost his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that allows Link to clip through the environment. Some would consider these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take several long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game compels the user to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer banned more than a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.