Twitch Personality Spends 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while many players have attempted to finish the game with only a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he played the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new save file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the title that refuses to load certain areas. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is programmed 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 adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables him to phase through the environment. A few would find these means reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He further implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the fights appear grueling. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 straight. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone items during the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.