Twitch Personality Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that impose unique rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the game with a single stick—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the title using only bombs or the attempt where he aimed to beat the game with no energy. A one-branch run, however, seems unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole game. Yet if the branch 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. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this character acquires full endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and generates a new game file that combines the conditions of the first two files.

This causes new problems, however. The merged file has a Link that never obtain the capability to enter shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to load certain locations. As with everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the software midway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the character he transfers between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that renders encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would find these means reason to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also uses a penalty of kinds stating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The video version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a blessing when some of them take several hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items during the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software compels the player to wield the legendary weapon as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.