Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Stick

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a playthrough. Yet, while many gamers have tried to finish the game using only a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to beat the game with a single branch—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the game solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character gains maximum endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This creates new issues, though. The fused save file has a Link that did not acquired the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but executing it means relying on an unstable version of the title that fails to open some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he transfers across universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would find these means reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, establishing an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still only a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone items during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, he manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. RIP.