Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous gamers have tried to finish the game with only a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he went through the game using only bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole world. But if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full stamina and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third save file that combines the states of the original two.

That causes fresh problems, however. The merged file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access sacred places. Fortunately, 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 load some locations. As with 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 software partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a glitch that enables Link to phase through the world. Some would consider these means 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 entertain his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all just a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to use the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

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