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

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous gamers have attempted to complete the game using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, such as the instance he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with no stamina. A single stick run, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest tool in the entire world. But 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, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a new save file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This causes new issues, though. The fused save file has a Link that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the title that refuses to load certain areas. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the software partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the Link he transfers across universes is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is still a ineffective weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of items to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that allows him to phase through the world. A few would consider these methods grounds to discredit the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He also uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He is unable to always clone items during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the player to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.