Streaming Star Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: 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 novel self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a gameplay session. However, while many players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a single stick—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he went through the game using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with zero stamina. A single stick run, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a third save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That causes new issues, though. The fused save file has a Link that never acquired the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the game that refuses to load certain locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he pulls between universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of items to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that allows him to clip through the world. A few would consider these means grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube version of his journey spares the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take several hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still just a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone items during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over a thousand people in his Twitch chat. RIP.