Streaming Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of novel challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. However, although numerous gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game using only explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with no stamina. A one-branch playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile tool in the whole world. But if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and first starting area, and this Link gains full endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new save file that combines the states of the original two.

That causes new problems, however. The fused file has a Link that never acquired the capability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the title that fails to load some locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the environment. A few would consider these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't always clone objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.