Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single 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 creative challenge runs that impose special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the title using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, 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 system, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character gains maximum endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh problems, however. The merged save file has a Link that did not obtain the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that fails to open certain locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear issue, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a ineffective item that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also makes use of a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. A few would consider these methods grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The video edit of his journey spares the viewer endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all only a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

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