Twitch Personality Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous gamers have attempted to complete the game with just a stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the very same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he went through the game using only bombs or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A one-branch run, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. But if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The complete story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this Link gains full stamina and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct 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 original two.

That causes fresh issues, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the title that fails to load certain areas. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the durability issue, as the character he transfers across universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that allows Link to clip through the environment. Some would find these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear painful. The video version of his journey spares the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them last several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.