Twitch Star Dedicates Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of novel self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, while many players have tried to finish the game with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the individual who aimed to beat the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to beat the game with no stamina. A one-branch run, though, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the whole durability system, which is particularly important when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” save where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this character acquires full stamina and health. From here, he starts a cutscene and halts midway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets confused and creates a new save file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This causes new issues, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the file exploit addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the game that fails to open certain locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He begins the game on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to make sure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the introductory version of the hero is programmed so that he cannot break any tools he wields, presumably to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the start of the game. But that's additionally how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the character he pulls across universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not one that eliminates all possible difficulty. The stick is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful number of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a glitch that allows Link to phase through the environment. A few would consider these means reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to engage his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of sorts stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights appear painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple hours. One boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf battle, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is still only a piece of wood. He can't always clone items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer banned more than 1,000 users in his live stream. RIP.