Twitch Personality Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous players have attempted to finish the game with just a stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a single branch—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, like the instance he went through the title solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the story with no energy. A single stick run, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the whole world. But if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a new game file that merges the states of the original two.

This causes new problems, though. The merged file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the game that fails to load certain locations. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is still a ineffective item that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number of items to boost his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the environment. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through many of the game's main enemies, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take multiple long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.