Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although numerous gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he went through the game using only explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with no energy. A single stick playthrough, though, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is especially important when working with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

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 separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character acquires full stamina and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new save file that combines the states of the first two files.

This causes new issues, though. The merged save file has a Link that never acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the game that refuses to load some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the Link he transfers between universes is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is still a ineffective weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables him to clip through the environment. Some would consider these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The video edit of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take several long hours. One boss fight, 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 unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He can't always duplicate objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game compels the player to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than a thousand people in his live stream. RIP.