Streaming Personality Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. However, while many players have attempted to finish the game with just a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the game with a single stick—specifically, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, like the instance he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the story with zero energy. A one-branch run, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile tool in the entire world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires full stamina and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.

This causes new problems, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that fails to open certain locations. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is still a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of items to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that enables Link to phase through the environment. Some would find these means reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them last several long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He is unable to always clone items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to use the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer banned over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. RIP.