Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while numerous gamers have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to beat the game with a single stick—meaning, the very same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the game using only bombs or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with zero stamina. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this character gains full stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a third game file that combines the states of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, however. The merged file has a Link that did not acquired the ability to enter shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes readily, but executing it means depending on an buggy version of the game that refuses to open some locations. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory version of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he pulls across universes is the one from the start of the game. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The branch is still a weak item that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of items to boost his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a bug that enables Link to phase through the world. Some would consider these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further uses a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights appear grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the viewer endure 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 final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still only a stick. He is unable to always duplicate items during the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed over 1,000 people in his live stream. RIP.