Streaming Personality Spends 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, like the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with no stamina. A single stick run, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This creates new problems, however. The merged save file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the title that refuses to load some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he pulls between dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the world. Some would consider these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all only a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over a thousand people in his Twitch chat. RIP.