Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while numerous players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a single branch—meaning, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game using only bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability system, which is especially important when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple answer is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. 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 pauses midway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That creates new problems, however. The merged file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the game that refuses to load some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear issue, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the environment. Some would find these methods grounds to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The video edit of his quest doesn't make the viewer endure the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still just a stick. He can't necessarily clone items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the user to wield the legendary weapon 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 a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.