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

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply unique rules on a playthrough. However, while many gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he went through the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a third game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That causes fresh problems, however. The merged save file has a Link that never obtain the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to load some locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the Link he pulls between universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is still a ineffective item that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant supply of items to boost his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that enables him to phase through the environment. A few would find these means reason to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 hours. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still only a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer banned more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.