Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose special rules on a playthrough. However, although numerous players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the game with a single branch—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, like the time he went through the game using only explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with zero stamina. A single stick run, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is exploits. The full answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this character acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This causes new problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable build of the game that fails to load certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective item that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that allows Link to clip through the environment. A few would consider these means reason to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat many of the game's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The video edit of his quest spares the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last several long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain showdown, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still just a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate items during the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.