Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight 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 debuted, fans would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although many players have tried to finish Tears of the Kingdom with only a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a single stick—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the title solely with explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the story with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems unfeasible 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 especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character gains maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts partway through to tell the software to open an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new save file that merges the states of the original two.

This causes fresh problems, though. The fused file has a protagonist that never obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that fails to load certain areas. Like other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then updates the software partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Hurdles

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the character he pulls between universes is the version from the start of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters onerous. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of consumables to boost his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that allows Link to clip through the world. A few would consider these means reason to discredit the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a penalty of sorts stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll remove a fan from his live stream, establishing an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The video edit of his quest spares the viewer sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an incredible twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases the hero's health as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily clone items during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software compels the player to wield the Master Sword as the last strike, so technically, it's not fully a stick-only playthrough. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than 1,000 people in his live stream. Rest in peace.