Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous players have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one stick—specifically, the very same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of challenge runs, such as the time he played the game using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward 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 impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this character acquires maximum stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the game to open an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

This creates fresh problems, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the game that refuses to load some areas. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear issue, as the character he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It further 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 additionally makes use of a glitch that allows Link to phase through the environment. Some would consider these methods reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his audience. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The video version of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is still only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the final attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.