Streaming Star Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Beat <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 creative challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single branch—meaning, the very same one from start to finish.

PointCrow is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the instance he played the game using only bombs or the attempt where he aimed to beat the game with zero energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this character gains full endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh issues, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy build of the game that refuses to open some locations. Like everything else, he has a clever solution for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the Link he transfers between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eradicates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that allows him to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods grounds to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

The streamer manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles appear grueling. The YouTube version of his journey spares the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple long hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the user to use the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over a thousand people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.