Before you start:

You’ll want to make the game settings ideal for the completion of this category by making fighting as easy as possible for you. You want both damage modifiers reduced to easiest. Combat and campaign AI set to poor and combat speed set to fastest.

Character Creation:(ideal selections in bold if you’re not interested in the reasoning behind choices)

Character creation is the most important part of many M&B speedruns as they give your starting stats and items and most categories will be over before you reach level 2 so the starting stats are extremely important.

First step is gender selection. While in most games this is a cosmetic choice in Mount & Blade: Warband each gender gives different stats. You will be selecting Male as this will give you +1 to strength and charisma. Female gives +1 Agility and +1 Int, while also removing the Squire option later on, which is what this run uses… So pick male.

The first selection (Your father was…) you will want to make after this is a choice between Hunter and Warrior, though Nomad and Thief also add some desirable stats but not enough to counter the good spreads from both Hunter and Warrior. The important stats that Hunter gives are +1 to Strength and +2 to Agility along with +1 to Athletics and +15 to two handed proficiency. While Warrior gives 1 Strength, 1 Agility and 1 Charisma along with +1 ironflesh, +1 power strike and +1 weapon master with +2 one handed proficiency and +23 two handed proficiency. The choice of Hunter will help you to move quicker and close the gaps in the larger arenas quicker while also giving you decent damage. While warrior is for just helping you gain points in ironflesh and power strike which let you take more damage and deal more melee damage.

The second selection (Early life) will be a choice between Page and Urchin none of the others give worthwhile proficiencies. Page will add +1 to Strength and +1 Charisma along with +1 power strike and +8 one handed. While Urchin will give +1 Agility and +1 intelligence.along with +8 One Handed.

The third selection(Adulthood) in normal plays will generally determine the items you have with you at the start, but those are largely irrelevant in this run. Squire is the best choice in these options giving proficiencies in everything with +23 One Handed and +38 Two handed being the most important. Along with +1 Strength +1 Agility which are the two stats you want to improve giving hp and speed. Also giving +1 power strike further increasing melee damage and +1 weapons master allowing your proficiency to go higher. Smith is probably the second best option, it gives +1 strength, +1 intelligence +1 weapons master and +11 One Handed which is all inferior or equal to Squire.

Fourth selection screen(reason for adventuring) is a relatively easy choice with Revenge being the option you choose. Revenge gives +2 Strength and +1 power strike. Other options here that give useful stats are Loss with +1 ironflesh, Wanderlust +2 Agility, Forced out +1 Strength, +1 weapons master and Money +1 Agility. Forced Out is the only real contender but, by this stage selecting optimal choices your weapons master skill should be high enough.

As an example the world record as of writing selects Hunter, Street Urchin, Squire, Revenge. I personally go with Warrior, Page, Squire, Revenge.

Now you’ve made your selections it’s time to put your skill and stat points to use. What you’ll want for attributes is a mix of strength and agility for damage and movement speed ideally 12 strength and 9-10 athletics. You then want to max out power strike and athletics again for the damage and speed, extra skill points can be put into weapon master if it’s below 2 or ironflesh for more health. Put all proficiency points into one handed weapons.

Do whatever you want when setting your appearance, I generally just press randomise.

When selecting your starting location you want to select Sargoth as the tournament held by Nords will never have you worrying about horses or bows making it much quicker and more predictable as any remaining enemies will run towards you instead of keeping their distance. Another potential option would be Reyvadin because you start closer to the bandit and merchant which can cut time down there… But the tournament is a lot more random. So choose Sargoth.

The run: Your character is created, you’ve started your timer after hitting continue the second time and now you’re facing down the bandit. Kill him as quick as you can, potentially you can get a headshot with your crossbow killing him instantly and spawning the merchant. But generally you just want to run up and kill him with your sword.

Talk to the merchant he’ll take you back to his house, talk to him again and then select the second option. Press tab to leave the city and then return to Sargoth(or Reyvadin) and then join the tournament.(If there isn’t one being held you’ll need to reset and recreate the character and try again.)

Now you need to fight through 6 rounds of the tournament, in the early rounds when the teams are much larger rely/hope your teammates do a good job and try to take out groups further away from your teammates to speed things up. Later rounds try to avoid getting stuck hitting their shield and deal as much damage as possible. The tournament itself is really just RNG on team set ups and how the AI runs around in the arena. Finish your timer on the screen announcing that you won the tournament.

This concludes my guide on tournament% if you have any questions or potential edits, just let know. Good luck! ~Muzgrob