Streaming Star Dedicates 37 Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while many players have tried to complete the game with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he played the game using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with no stamina. A one-branch run, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the whole world. Yet if the branch shatters, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple explanation is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this character acquires maximum endurance and hearts. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a new game file that merges the states of the original two.

That creates new problems, though. The fused file has a Link that never acquired the ability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the game that refuses to load some locations. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the character he pulls across universes is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also makes use of a bug that allows him to phase through the environment. A few would consider these means reason to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further uses a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to get through several of the game's bosses, but the battles look painful. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last several long hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing twenty-three straight. The final villain showdown, which depletes Link's health as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable branch is still only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone objects during the fight.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer banned over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.