Twitch Star Dedicates 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply special rules on a gameplay session. However, while numerous gamers have attempted to complete the game with just a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a single stick—meaning, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch run, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum stamina and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This causes fresh issues, though. The merged file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the title that refuses to load some areas. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear issue, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that enables Link to phase through the world. Some would consider these means reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take several long hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still just a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.