Twitch Personality Spends 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous players have tried to finish the game with just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he went through the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire durability system, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character acquires maximum endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a new save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This creates fresh problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to load certain areas. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful supply of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that enables him to clip through the environment. Some would find these means grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still just a stick. He can't always clone objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.