Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours 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 Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous gamers have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the time he went through the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with zero energy. A single stick run, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. But if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple answer is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the intro and initial starting area, and this character acquires full endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and pauses partway through to instruct the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the states of the original two.

This creates new issues, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the title that fails to load some areas. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the Link he transfers across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful supply of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that enables him to clip through the world. A few would consider these means reason to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all only a stick. He can't always duplicate objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.