Twitch Star Spends 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, although numerous gamers have tried to finish the game with just a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to clear the game with a single branch—meaning, the very same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no energy. A single stick run, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly important when working with the weakest tool in the whole world. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple answer is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This causes fresh issues, however. The fused file has a Link that never obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that fails to load certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the one from the start of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. Some would find these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every spirit he employs, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the viewer endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, he does defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than a thousand people in his live stream. RIP.