Streaming Personality Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, while many gamers have tried to complete the game with only a wooden stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a single stick—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the title using only explosives or the attempt where he aimed to defeat the game with zero stamina. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple answer is exploits. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he progresses standardly, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character gains full stamina and health. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third save file that combines the states of the original two.

This causes new problems, though. The merged save file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but executing it means depending on an buggy build of the title that refuses to load some locations. As with other obstacles, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how the streamer bypasses the wear problem, as the character he pulls across dimensions is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that gives him an abundant supply of items to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that allows him to phase through the world. A few would consider these methods reason to question the validity of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He further implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look painful. The video version of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The indestructible stick is after all only a stick. He can't always clone objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow removed over 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.