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

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a one branch—specifically, the very same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for such challenge runs, like the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with no energy. A single stick run, though, sounds impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete story, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” file where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum stamina and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and creates a new save file that merges the conditions of the first two files.

That creates fresh issues, however. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the title that fails to load some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the software partway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue version of Link is programmed so that he is unable to break any weapons he uses, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is still a ineffective item that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows him to phase through the world. Some would consider these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban one fan from his live stream, creating an incentive to avoid depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look painful. The video edit of his quest spares the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when a few of them last several long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is still just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the user to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over a thousand people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.