Twitch Star Spends 37 Straight Attempting to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that two years post-launch since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, enthusiasts would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply unique restrictions on a gameplay session. However, while many players have tried to complete the game using only a stick, content creator the streamer stands out as the player who aimed to beat the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he played the game solely with explosives or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with no energy. A one-branch playthrough, however, seems impossible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which forces Link to wield the Master Sword. Then, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest weapon in the entire game. But if the branch breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete answer, I kid you not, is alternate dimensions. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So the creator creates a “setup” save where he advances normally, and the real save, where he's restricted. The preparatory save has him going through the prologue and initial tutorial island, and this Link gains full stamina and health. From this point, he triggers a cinematic and pauses midway through to tell the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The game gets mixed up and creates a third game file that merges the conditions of the original two.

This causes new problems, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that never acquired the capability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but executing it means depending on an unstable build of the title that fails to load some locations. Like everything else, he has a clever workaround for it: He starts Tears of the Kingdom on its early version 1.0, and then updates the game midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Durability and Other Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of Link is coded so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, likely to prevent a situation where the player gets trapped at the beginning of the game. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the character he transfers between universes is the version from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not one that eliminates all possible friction. The stick is nonetheless a weak weapon that makes encounters tedious. But at that point, it's all a question of grit and dedication. It further helps that there's a copying exploit that gives him an plentiful supply of items to boost his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables him to phase through the world. Some would consider these methods reason to question the validity of the attempt, but in my mind, he's a resourceful gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also implements a penalty of sorts stipulating that, for every fairy he employs, he'll ban a fan from his Twitch chat, creating an motivation to not overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Final Encounter

The streamer succeeds to defeat many of the game's bosses, but the fights look grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when some of them take several hours. One enemy encounter, Queen Gibdo, takes an incredible 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The indestructible branch is after all just a piece of wood. He is unable to always duplicate objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? In a matter of speaking, PointCrow does overcome the dragon version of Ganon. But the software forces the user to wield the Master Sword as the last attack, so technically, it's not quite completely a stick-only playthrough. But what fun is that?

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