Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Stick

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous gamers have tried to finish the game with just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a single branch—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the instance he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with zero stamina. A one-branch run, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole world. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “setup” file where he progresses normally, and the real file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a new game file that combines the conditions of the original two.

That causes fresh problems, however. The merged file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the game that refuses to load certain areas. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the character he transfers across universes is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all potential difficulty. The branch is still a weak item that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of items to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that enables Link to clip through the environment. A few would find these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes 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 motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The video edit of his quest spares the audience endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three straight. The final villain showdown, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all only a stick. He can't always duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.