Twitch Star Spends 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. However, while many players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the very same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the whole world. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains full endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third save file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates new issues, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the title that refuses to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is still a weak item that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the environment. Some would find these methods grounds to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The video version of his quest spares the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.