Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous players have attempted to complete the game using only a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, like the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with no stamina. A single stick run, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” file where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this Link acquires full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new save file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes fresh issues, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that refuses to open some locations. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a ineffective weapon that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful supply of items to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would find these means grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube edit of his quest spares the audience endure the whole fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last several long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 hours. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all only a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he 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 fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

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