Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Beat <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to complete the game with just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the very same stick from start to finish.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the time he went through the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with no stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The setup file has him going through the prologue and initial starting area, and this character acquires maximum stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

This causes fresh problems, though. The merged file has a Link that did not obtain the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the game that refuses to open certain areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to ensure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability problem, as the character he pulls across universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of items to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that enables him to phase through the world. Some would consider these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he uses, he'll remove one fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the entire fights, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still just a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily clone items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a stick-only run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.