Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a One Branch

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply special restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while many gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, streamer the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a single branch—specifically, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game using only explosives or the attempt where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A single stick run, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the whole weapon wear system, which is especially relevant when dealing with the most fragile tool in the entire world. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The full story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The preparatory file has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this character acquires full endurance and health. From this point, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a new game file that combines the states of the original two.

That causes new issues, however. The merged file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses easily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy version of the title that fails to load some areas. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it begins functioning correctly.

Overcoming Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory form of Link is programmed so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer gets around the durability issue, as the Link he transfers between dimensions is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever technique, but not one that eradicates all potential friction. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders battles onerous. 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 plentiful number of items to boost his attack, or accumulate on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that allows him to phase through the world. A few would find these means reason to discredit the validity of the run, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He also uses a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Encounter

PointCrow succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his quest spares the audience endure the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them last multiple hours. A particular boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible stick is still just a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects during the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, he manages to defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the last 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 banned more than a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.