Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a playthrough. However, while many gamers have attempted to finish the game using only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he went through the title using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire durability system, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. 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 distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this character gains full endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the game that refuses to open some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the world. A few would find these means reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The video version of his quest spares the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 straight. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all only a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate objects during the battle.

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

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