Streaming Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the game with a one branch—specifically, the very same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, like the instance he played the game using only explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with no energy. A single stick run, however, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character gains full endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a third save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This creates fresh issues, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that fails to load certain 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 patches the game partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the character he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that enables him to clip through the environment. Some would consider these methods reason to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look painful. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the viewer endure the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all only a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate items during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned over 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.