Twitch Star Spends Thirty-Seven 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 creative challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a gameplay session. Yet, although many gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom using only a stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to clear the game with a one branch—specifically, the exact same stick from start to finish.

The streamer is famous for these kinds of challenge runs, like the time he played the game using only explosives or the effort where he tried to defeat the game with zero energy. A one-branch run, however, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to use the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is particularly important when working with the weakest tool in the whole game. But if the branch breaks, that's it. Game over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The simple explanation is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is alternate dimensions. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have distinct playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “preparation” file where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's limited. The setup file has him going through the intro and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum stamina and hearts. From this point, he starts a cutscene and pauses midway through to instruct the software to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets confused and generates a new game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This creates fresh issues, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that did not obtain the capability to enter sacred places. Luckily, this is an issue that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means depending on an buggy build of the game that refuses to load certain locations. Like everything else, he has a technical solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its pre-release version 1.0, and then patches the game partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Additional Challenges

Curiously, the prologue form of the hero is programmed so that he is unable to damage any tools he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the character he transfers between universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is still a weak item that renders encounters tedious. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also aids that there's a duplication glitch that grants him an abundant supply of items to improve his attack, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables him to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods reason to question the legitimacy of the run, but to my view, he's a resourceful gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

PointCrow manages to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a good thing when a few of them last several hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes Link's health as it progresses, is a memorable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still just a piece of wood. He can't always clone items midway the battle.

So, is it possible? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow manages to defeat the beast form of the antagonist. But the game compels the user to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

In the end, PointCrow removed more than 1,000 people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.