Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a single branch—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he played the game using only bombs or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with zero energy. A one-branch run, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this character acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a third save file that combines the states of the original two.

That causes fresh issues, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the title that refuses to open some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that allows him to clip through the world. Some would find these means grounds to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, establishing an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The video edit of his journey spares the viewer sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is still only a stick. He can't always duplicate items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

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