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

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many gamers have attempted to finish the game with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the game with a one stick—meaning, the very same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he went through the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with no stamina. A single stick run, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character gains maximum endurance and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a third save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This creates new problems, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the game that refuses to load some areas. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak item that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the environment. Some would find these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed more than a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.