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

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous players have attempted to finish the game with only a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a single branch—meaning, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with zero energy. A one-branch run, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link gains full endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the software to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a new save file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates new issues, however. The fused save file has a Link that never acquired the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the game that fails to load some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the durability issue, as the character he transfers across universes is the one from the start of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of determination and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables him to clip through the world. A few would find these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take several long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is after all just a stick. He is unable to necessarily clone items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, he manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over 1,000 users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.