Streaming Star Dedicates 37 Hours Attempting to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

You might assume that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, fans would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply special rules on a playthrough. Yet, while many players have attempted to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to beat the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the exact same one from start to finish.

The streamer is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, like the instance he went through the game using only explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with zero stamina. A single stick run, though, sounds unfeasible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is particularly relevant when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. Yet if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is glitches. The complete story, I kid you not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have distinct game sessions that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he progresses standardly, and the real file, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires maximum endurance and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game to open 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.

That creates new problems, however. The fused file has a protagonist that did not acquired the ability to enter sacred places. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable build of the game that fails to load certain 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 software midway through to make sure it starts working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of Link is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the wear problem, as the Link he pulls between universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is still a ineffective weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of determination and dedication. It further helps that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally makes use of a bug that allows him to phase through the world. A few would find these means reason to question the validity of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, establishing an incentive to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a blessing when some of them last multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which erases the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is after all just a stick. He is unable to always duplicate objects midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the software forces the user to use the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer banned more than a thousand users in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.