Streaming Star Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose special rules on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a stick, streamer PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to beat the game with a single stick—meaning, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the title using only explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A single stick run, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when working with the weakest tool in the entire world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character gains maximum endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third save file that merges the states of the first two files.

That causes fresh issues, however. The merged save file has a Link that never acquired the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the game that refuses to load certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the character he transfers between universes is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll remove a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience endure the entire fights, which is a blessing when a few of them take several hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to always clone items during the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. RIP.