Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many players have attempted to complete the game with only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he went through the game using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the story with zero energy. A single stick run, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he progresses normally, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the prologue and first starting area, and this character acquires full stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

That causes fresh problems, however. The fused save file has a Link that did not obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the game that refuses to load some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he cannot break any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear issue, as the Link he pulls across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would find these methods reason to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to get through several of the game's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still just a piece of wood. He can't always duplicate objects during the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, the streamer removed over 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.