Streaming Star Spends 37 Straight Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a gameplay session. However, while many players have tried to finish the game using only a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the game using only bombs or the attempt where he tried to beat the game with zero energy. A single stick run, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a new save file that merges the states of the first two files.

That causes fresh issues, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that fails to load certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to improve his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that allows him to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them last several hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The final villain battle, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all only a stick. He can't always duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.