Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that impose special restrictions on a playthrough. However, while numerous players have tried to finish the game with only a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the game with a single branch—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

The streamer is renowned for such challenge runs, such as the instance he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the story with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is especially important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the stick breaks, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him going through the prologue and first starting area, and this Link gains full endurance and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets mixed up and creates a new save file that combines the states of the first two files.

That causes new issues, though. The fused save file has a Link that never acquired the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the game that refuses to open some areas. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls between universes is the one from the start of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all possible friction. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that renders encounters tedious. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and perseverance. It further aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful number of items to boost his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He additionally employs a bug that enables him to phase through the world. A few would consider these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his viewer. He further implements a penalty of kinds stating that, for every spirit he uses, he'll ban one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look grueling. The video edit of his quest spares the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last several hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items during the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than a thousand people in his live stream. RIP.