Streaming Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <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 arrived, fans would have run out of creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many gamers have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the title solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with no stamina. A one-branch run, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the whole world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new save file that combines the states of the first two files.

That creates new issues, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to open certain areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the Link he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that allows him to clip through the world. Some would consider these methods grounds to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his audience. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll remove one fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The video edit of his quest spares the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible stick is still only a stick. He can't always clone objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow banned over a thousand users in his live stream. RIP.