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

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while many gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the game with a one branch—specifically, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he went through the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch run, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. But if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That causes fresh problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the title that refuses to load some areas. 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 game midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the character he transfers between universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a weak weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that enables Link to phase through the environment. A few would consider these means reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid 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 appear painful. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the viewer sit through the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last several long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all only a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate items during the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the user to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.