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

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although numerous players have tried to complete the game with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with zero energy. A one-branch run, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is particularly important when working with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” file where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This causes fresh issues, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the title that fails to load some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any tools he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is still a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of items to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the entire fights, which is a blessing when some of them take several long hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all just a stick. He can't always duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.