Streaming Star Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many gamers have tried to finish the game with just a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with no energy. A one-branch run, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and initial starting area, and this Link acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a third save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This creates new issues, though. The merged file has a Link that did not acquired the capability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable build of the game that fails to open some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the Link he transfers across universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that allows Link to phase through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban one fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his quest spares the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow banned over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.