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

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while many players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a single stick—meaning, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the time he played the game using only bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires 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 weapon in the entire world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this Link acquires maximum stamina and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a new save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This creates new problems, however. The merged file has a Link that never acquired the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the game that fails to load some areas. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful supply of items to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables him to phase through the environment. Some would find these methods reason to question the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The video version of his journey spares the audience endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last several hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all only a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.