Twitch Personality Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he went through the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability system, which is especially important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire world. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this character gains full stamina and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates fresh issues, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that refuses to open certain locations. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that allows Link to phase through the environment. Some would consider these means reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube edit of his quest spares the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take several hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone items midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the user to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer banned more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.