Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose special restrictions on a playthrough. However, although numerous gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the time he went through the title using only bombs or the attempt where he aimed to beat the story with zero stamina. A single stick run, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability system, which is especially important when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains full endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and generates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This causes fresh issues, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the ability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the game that refuses to open certain locations. As with everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any tools he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful supply of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that enables Link to clip through the world. Some would find these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll remove a viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The video version of his quest doesn't make the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take several long hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still just a stick. He can't necessarily clone objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game compels the player to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned over a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.