Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a playthrough. However, while numerous gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the title using only explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with no energy. A one-branch run, though, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability system, which is especially relevant when working with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The full answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates new problems, however. The fused file has a Link that never acquired the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable build of the game that fails to load some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a ineffective weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the world. Some would consider these means grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, creating an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate items during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over 1,000 people in his live stream. Rest in peace.