Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, while numerous gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single stick—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the game using only explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with no energy. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup file has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a new game file that combines the conditions of the original two.

This creates fresh issues, however. The fused save file has a Link that never acquired the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the title that refuses to load some areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible difficulty. The branch is still a ineffective item that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a glitch that allows Link to clip through the environment. A few would consider these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He also implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through several of the game's bosses, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube version of his journey spares the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last several hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's health as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is after all only a stick. He is unable to always duplicate objects midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than a thousand people in his live stream. Rest in peace.