Streaming Star Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while many gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the time he played the title using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with no energy. A single stick playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains full endurance and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and halts partway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh issues, however. The merged save file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the game that fails to open certain locations. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of items to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a glitch that allows him to clip through the world. Some would consider these methods reason to discredit the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The video version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is still just a stick. He is unable to always clone objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? 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 last attack, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

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