Twitch Personality Spends 37 Hours Trying 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, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, while many gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, like the instance he played the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with zero stamina. A single stick run, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a third game file that combines the states of the original two.

This creates fresh problems, however. The fused save file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to open some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the character he transfers between universes is the one from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that renders battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that allows him to phase through the world. A few would find these means grounds to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also uses a penalty of sorts stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of the game's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate objects midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.