Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven Hours Trying to Conquer <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

You might assume that after two years since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have exhausted creative challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a playthrough. However, while numerous gamers have tried to complete the game with just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the adventure with a single branch—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the time he played the title using only bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the story with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, though, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the weakest tool in the entire game. Yet if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The full story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this character acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and generates a third game file that merges the states of the first two files.

That causes fresh problems, however. The merged file has a Link that never acquired the capability to access sacred places. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch fixes easily, but pulling it off means depending on an unstable build of the title that refuses to load certain locations. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He begins the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the introductory version of the hero is coded so that he is unable to break any tools he wields, likely to prevent a scenario where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear problem, as the character he transfers across universes is the version from the start of the story. It's a smart technique, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is still a ineffective item that renders encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a matter of determination and perseverance. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an plentiful number of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that allows Link to clip through the environment. Some would find these means grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Final Showdown

PointCrow manages to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the entire fights, which is a blessing when a few of them last multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The Ganondorf showdown, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible stick is still only a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate objects midway the fight.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to overcome the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. RIP.