Twitch Star Dedicates 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although many players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he played the game using only bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the story with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest tool in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link acquires full endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This creates fresh problems, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an unstable version of the game that fails 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 software partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a bug that enables him to clip through the world. Some would find these means reason to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate items during the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

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