Twitch Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a One Branch

You might assume that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that apply unique rules on a gameplay session. However, although many players have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

PointCrow is renowned for these kinds of difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the title using only bombs or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with zero stamina. A one-branch run, however, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires Link to wield the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear system, which is especially important when working with the most fragile weapon in the entire game. But if the stick shatters, that's it. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The simple explanation is glitches. The full answer, I kid you not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak Tears of the Kingdom's saving mechanism to have separate game sessions that impact one another. So the creator does a “preparation” file where he progresses normally, and the actual file, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the intro and first tutorial island, and this Link gains full stamina and health. From this point, he starts a cinematic and halts midway through to instruct the game to open an auto-save from the branch-only file. The game gets confused and generates a third game file that combines the states of the original two.

This causes new issues, however. The fused save file has a Link that never obtain the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is an issue that the file exploit addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy build of the title that fails to load some locations. Like other obstacles, he has a clever solution for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is coded so that he cannot break any weapons he wields, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the wear issue, as the Link he transfers between universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eradicates all possible difficulty. The stick is still a ineffective weapon that makes battles onerous. But at that stage, it's entirely a question of determination and dedication. It further aids that there's a duplication glitch that gives him an abundant number of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He also employs a bug that allows him to phase through the world. Some would consider these means grounds to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a inventive gamer who is ready to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his Twitch chat, establishing an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the battles appear painful. The YouTube edit of his quest doesn't make the viewer endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when some of them take several hours. A particular enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 straight. The final villain battle, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all only a stick. He is unable to necessarily duplicate items midway the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, he does overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the user to wield the legendary weapon as the last strike, so strictly speaking, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, PointCrow removed over a thousand people in his live stream. RIP.