Streaming Star Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose special rules on a playthrough. However, although many players have attempted to complete the game with just a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a one stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, like the instance he went through the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link acquires full stamina and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the states of the original two.

This creates new problems, however. The merged file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the game that refuses to load certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he transfers across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful supply of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these means grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, establishing an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through several of the game's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The video version of his quest spares the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take several hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still just a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone items during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the player to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.