Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose special rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he played the game using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third save file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

That creates fresh problems, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that refuses to open some locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the character he transfers across universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the world. Some would consider these means reason to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his quest spares the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain battle, which depletes the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

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