Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, like the instance he went through the game using only bombs or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple explanation is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a third game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates fresh problems, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the title that refuses to open some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of items to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a glitch that allows Link to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He further implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer banned over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.