With a short run time and significantly less RNG involved, the Beautiful Wife category is a great start for new runners, if you can manage the dancing minigame.

Steps to Marriage 0. Character Choices: Adventurer, Wit and Charm, 1640, Spain

1. Reach Colonel rank
2. Dance 1
3. Ruby ring
4. Defeat fiancé
5. Dance 2
6. Fight Mendoza
7. Marriage

Character Choices

• Adventurer difficulty. This is currently the lowest accepted difficulty, and lower difficulty levels make swordfighting and sailing easier.
• Wit and Charm. This allows you to dance with beautiful daughters at a lower rank, and helps you with the dancing minigame. This will save quite a bit of time grinding out promotion levels.
• 1640 Spain: This gives us the Mail Runner as our starting ship. It is the strongest ship of the fastest class of ship in the game, and we don't need the extra crew space that bigger ships offer. 1600 Spain, 1620 Spain, and 1640 France starts us with a pinnace, which is slightly weaker but just as fast.

Colonel Rank Your starting city and the surrounding settlements will play a big part in determining the best strategy for reaching colonel rank fast. If you are surrounded by only Spanish cities, you can focus on pirate or indian ships. If you have other nations nearby, you should ask the bartenders and try to find one that has a beautiful daughter before attacking ships from a specific nation. In addition, you want to find a city with a beautiful daughter that is close to another Spanish city (or multiple). This will help save time later on.

Once you've found your future wife, you can focus on grinding promotion levels for that nation. The fastest way to do so is by taking out notorious pirates or helping with transport missions. If none are nearby, you'll need to capture ~10 regular enemy ships for colonel rank. Look for indian villages and pirates havens, as they typically spawn multiple ships after you agree to help them.

While you are capturing ships and earning promotions, be sure to talk to the mysterious stranger every chance you can until he offers to sell you a ruby ring. If you're low on gold, keep a few of your captured ships to sell instead of sinking them.

Dancing Once you reach colonel rank, you will be asked for a dance. This minigame involves watching your partner's hand movements and reacting with the correct dance move. If you miss too many moves, the daughter will ditch you on the dance floor and you will not progress the marriage questline.

The best way to succeed in this minigame is to memorize which hand movement corresponds to which button. I would also recommend pressing the numpad keys on your keyboard instead of clicking the on-screen buttons. Practice makes perfect! If you're still having trouble identifying the hand movements, check out the existing runs for this category.

Ruby Ring After the first dance, your future wife will express her desire for a "flashing" ruby ring. These can only be purchased from the mysterious traveler in the back of the tavern. If you haven't got one already, be sure to have ~2000 gold, and then keep leaving and entering the city until you can buy one.

Jealous Fiancé At your next meeting with the beautiful daughter after giving her the ring, she will mention that her jealous fiancé has challenged you to a duel. Leave and re-enter the city, and then offer to "deal with him quickly". The duel is a fairly easy and straightforward swordfight at this difficulty level. On swashbuckler difficulty, this guy can be even tougher than Montalban, depending on how old you are.

After defeating him, you are asked for another dance. The same tips and tricks for the first dance apply here. After completing the dance, leave the city and quick-save right before entering it again.

Colonel Mendoza Upon returning to the governor, he will inform you that his daughter has been kidnapped by the evil Colonel Mendoza. He will spawn in a random Spanish city, akin to Baron Raymondo and Marquis Montalban. If he did not spawn near you, quick-load and talk to the governor again until he does.

Once he's nearby, simply engage him in battle, crash into him to start a swordfight, and defeat him to rescue your soon-to-be wife. Sail back to the city and return her to the governor.

Marriage Return to the city one last time. Ask for the daughter's hand in marriage and watch the cutscene. Timer stops when the city menu appears after the cutscene. If you accidentally skipped the cutscene, don't worry! I will add the appropriate amount of time to the final time.

Good luck!