Streaming Personality Spends 37 Hours Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted novel challenge runs that apply unique rules on a playthrough. However, while numerous players have attempted to finish the game using just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a one branch—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he went through the title solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly relevant when dealing with the weakest weapon in the whole world. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The simple explanation is glitches. The full story, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The setup save has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains full endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cutscene and halts partway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and creates a new save file that merges the states of the first two files.

That creates fresh issues, though. The fused file has a Link that never obtain the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable version of the title that fails to open some locations. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then patches the game midway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of Link is coded so that he cannot damage any weapons he wields, likely to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the character he transfers between universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an plentiful supply of items to improve his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also employs a glitch that enables him to clip through the world. A few would find these methods grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for each spirit he employs, he'll ban one fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not depend too much on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the audience sit through the entire conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple long hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is still only a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate objects midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so strictly speaking, it's not completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.