Twitch Star Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <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 arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, although many players have attempted to finish the game with just a stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a single branch—specifically, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the instance he went through the game solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with zero stamina. A one-branch run, however, sounds impossible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is especially important when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire game. But if the branch shatters, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that affect one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this character gains maximum endurance and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and generates a new game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That causes fresh issues, though. The merged file has a Link that never obtain the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an unstable version of the game that fails to open some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the game midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the Link he transfers across universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a matter of determination and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant number of consumables to improve his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He additionally employs a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. Some would find these means reason to question the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for each spirit he uses, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

The streamer manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the audience endure the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last several hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable stick is after all only a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, he does defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the software compels the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned more than a thousand people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.