Twitch Star Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting 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 arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the instance he played the title using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to beat the game with zero stamina. A single stick run, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the intro and initial starting area, and this Link gains full endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a new game file that merges the states of the original two.

This causes new issues, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that fails to load certain locations. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of the hero is programmed so that he cannot damage any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is still a weak item that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. Some would find these means reason to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of the game's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still just a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate items during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to use the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.