Twitch Personality Spends 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while many players have tried to finish the game with only a stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the game with a single stick—meaning, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That causes new issues, however. The merged file has a Link that never acquired the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the game that refuses to load some locations. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the character he transfers across universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that enables him to clip through the world. A few would find these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take several hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, he manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed over a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.