Streaming Personality Dedicates 37 Hours Trying to Beat <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, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that apply unique rules on a playthrough. However, although numerous gamers have tried to complete Tears of the Kingdom with just a wooden stick, content creator the streamer holds the record as the individual who endeavored to clear the game with a one branch—meaning, the very same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, like the time he went through the game solely with explosives or the effort where he tried to beat the game with zero energy. A single stick playthrough, though, seems unfeasible at face value. There's the game's introduction, which forces the hero to wield the legendary blade. Then, there's the entire durability mechanic, which is especially relevant when working with the weakest tool in the entire game. Yet if the stick breaks, that's it. It's over.

The Method Behind the Madness

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The full answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate the game's save file system to have separate game sessions that affect one another. So the creator does a “preparation” save where he advances standardly, and the actual file, where he's limited. The preparatory save has him going through the intro and initial starting area, and this character acquires full stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cinematic and pauses partway through to tell the game to open an automatic save from the branch-only file. The game gets mixed up and creates a new game file that combines the states of the first two files.

That creates fresh issues, however. The fused save file has a protagonist that never acquired the ability to access shrines. Luckily, this is an issue that the file exploit fixes easily, but executing it means relying on an buggy version of the title that refuses to load certain areas. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then patches the game partway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is coded so that he cannot break any tools he uses, likely to prevent a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's additionally how the streamer bypasses the durability problem, as the Link he transfers across universes is the version from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all potential friction. The branch is nonetheless a ineffective weapon that renders encounters onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a question of grit and dedication. It also aids that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his attack, or stock up on healing spirits. He also employs a glitch that allows Link to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a resourceful player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He also uses a safeguard of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll remove one viewer from his live stream, establishing an motivation to avoid overly rely on them.

Major Battles and the Last Encounter

The streamer succeeds to get through many of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't make the viewer sit through the whole fights, which is a good thing when some of them take multiple hours. A particular enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's health as it progresses, is a notable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is after all just a stick. He can't always clone objects during the battle.

Did he succeed? Technically, he manages to overcome the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the player to use the legendary weapon as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite completely a branch-exclusive run. But where's the challenge in that?

In the end, the streamer removed more than 1,000 users in his live stream. Rest in peace.