Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

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

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, such as the time he played the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to beat the game with zero energy. A one-branch run, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is particularly important when working with the most fragile tool in the whole game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is glitches. The complete answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character acquires full endurance and hearts. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the software to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh issues, though. The merged file has a Link that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the title that refuses to load some areas. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls between dimensions is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of items to boost his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that allows him to phase through the world. Some would consider these means reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The video edit of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an incredible 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all only a stick. He is unable to always duplicate items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than a thousand people in his live stream. RIP.