Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special rules on a playthrough. Yet, while many gamers have tried to complete the game with only a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the title using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the whole game. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this character gains maximum stamina and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That creates new problems, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the title that refuses to load some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables him to phase through the world. Some would find these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The video edit of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple long hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which erases Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still just a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.