Streaming Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special rules on a gameplay session. However, while numerous gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the exact same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he went through the title solely with bombs or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he progresses normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this character gains full endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a third game file that combines the states of the original two.

This causes fresh issues, however. The fused file has a Link that never obtain the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the game that refuses to load some locations. Like other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the Link he transfers across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that enables Link to phase through the environment. A few would consider these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube version of his journey spares the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.