Streaming Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while numerous players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch run, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains full stamina and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That causes fresh problems, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that refuses to load certain areas. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of items to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that enables him to phase through the world. A few would find these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through many of the game's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take several long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three straight. The final villain showdown, which erases Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still only a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.