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If you decide to play Mafia Wars (or any game in Facebook) seriously; I would highly recommend you set-up a “play account” that you use strictly for playing games. Keep your personal Facebook account that you interact with your real friends and family separate from your gaming account.
You would be surprised at the number of people who will look up your personal information (it’s kind of creepy), and there are a lot of perverts lurking around using games as a guise for their personal enjoyment.
Out of the three character choices you have in the game when first registering (Fearless, Mogul and Maniac); Fearless is the best choice if you are looking to just level up quickly; without care of attack or defense. If you are looking for a more leveled player, then Maniac is a better choice. For a more in depth discussion and analysis; please review the advanced strategy guide.
Build your Mafia to 501 members as quickly as possible. This may be the opposite of what you have read on other’s strategy guides, but having a large Mafia helps win fights. Also think about it from this point: if you have 501 people in your Mafia, the actual number 501 looks intimidating to someone who may be deciding to attack you. Also, as you move forward in the game, you will find it harder and harder to win fights without *at least* 501 Mafia members.
Going along with the concept of having 501 Mafia; try and get as many Mafia members as possible (if you think you can get to 5000 members: then do it!). The earlier the better! Why is this? Simple: Zynga added extra features in September that make it worth you while to have a larger mafia that will discussed in other tips found here.
This tip is in every guide, and is always worth repeating: make sure you have one weapon, armor and vehicle for each member of your mafia (hopefully 501). When you go and attack someone in the game (or they attack you); the number of mafia you have will use that many of each of the most powerful weapon, armor and vehicle (or loot in most cases) you have in your inventory. This is what creates the "Mafia Attack Strength" and "Mafia Defense Strength" number you see on the inventory page. Of course (using 501 mafia as an example), attack weapons are different from defense weapons; so as you move forward in the game, you will have many sets of loot weapons for each of Attack and Defense.
Don't waste your Godfather points on rare items the Godfather offers. For example, usually the Godfather offers a high end weapon each week to add to your arsenal. This is NOT worth it. Trust me, the godfather weapons in most cases are weaker than the loot you can find in higher levels of Cuba and/or Moscow.
Instead, buying skill points with your Godfather points is the best way to use your Godfather points. Currently the Godfather offers 4 skill points for 14 Godfather points. This is the best item on the list to buy for many reasons; there will be an in depth analysis and discussion of it in the advanced strategy guide.
Buy as many "Mafia Mike's" as possible. They can’t be attacked, and they pay out the best value; bottom line is you want property that is safe, gives you income in New York so that you buy weapons to complete the jobs in each Tier.
- I would suggest you do the following if you are looking to collect Godfather points faster. When playing the Daily chance lotto, you will have a chance to “Claim Ticket Mastery bonus” after you submit a ticket (or multiple tickets). If you wait, and let it build up all the way to 6 of 6 ; you will have a chance to win up to 5 Godfather points. Remember though, it is a chance to win up to 5 GF points. The minimum you get is still 1 GF point!
- The optimal strategy for playing the “Daily Chance Lotto”:
Step 1 - Play Mafia Wars everyday, making sure you get one ticket each day for seven days. This means the Godfather will have given you 7 tickets in total by the end of the week.
Step 2 - Select your numbers and submit your ticket. This will bring your ticket mastery progress meter to 1. Do not claim the mastery bonus yet! Instead, hold off till the next day for your 2nd ticket! If you have 2 or more tickets left, then move on to the next step.
Step 3 - Submit one more ticket, brining your ticket mastery progress meter to 2. Collecting the ticket mastery bonus after 2 tickets are submitted; you will get one free ticket. Select your numbers and submit this free ticket you just received. Now the ticket mastery progress meter should be at 1. However, DO NOT collect the bonus at 1, submit another ticket (if you have any left), or wait until tomorrow to receive another ticket!
Step 4 - Repeat step 3 when you get another ticket. Get the idea? You want to keep collecting those free tickets you receive after the ticket mastery progress meter reaches 2, and submit those free tickets right away. Essentially, you are getting 2 tickets per day, by using these steps.
If you use this strategy, you should be able to submit up to 13 tickets per week from just the tickets you get from playing Mafia Wars each day (assuming you play everyday for a week of course), instead of the 7 you would normally get without using this strategy. Plus at the end of the week, when you can't get anymore tickets to get you to 2 on the mastery bonus, just claim your ticket mastery bonus with 1, and get a random loot item (although its not great, at least its something!).
Make certain that when you have access to Cuba and/or Moscow; as soon as you can travel there to do so. Even if you decide not to start the Cuba or Moscow Tiers, make sure to just travel there and start the respective businesses. This is because each country requires a significant amount of the local monies to purchases weapons, armor, and vehicles needed to do jobs in each tier. Trust me, by collecting and saving money now, you will feel less frustrated when you decide to take on the tiers in Cuba and/or Moscow.
Proceed to Chapter 1 - Tips for starting off
In Mafia Wars, and also Facebook (or any other Social network site); keep your private information as private and secure as possible. By adding large groups of people you don’t know as your friends, they have access to your private information. Hence tip #1 is to setup a “play” account with limited information as possible, which goes along with this tip in making sure to limit how much information you really want to give to strangers. Trust me, as a Male, I do from time to time get curious and look at profile pictures and info of attractive women; although I don’t use it for anything (like stalking); I’m sure there are thousands of other desperate males (or females) who will see no problem using your personal info for their own interests.
Daily Lotto explained:
The daily lotto is a chance for players to win prizes by submitting a lotto ticket (given by the Godfather for playing each day; or alternatively you can purchase a ticket for 2 Godfather points). You choose 5 numbers (you can select numbers yourself, or randomly select numbers using the button) and submit the ticket. The draw happens at the end of the week, and results are announced the next day!
The prizes if you have a winning ticket are as follows:
If you have 1 matching number on a daily chance lotto ticket you win one random loot item.
If you have 2 matching numbers on a daily chance lotto ticket you win a free daily chance ticket for the next week's draw.
If you have 3 matching numbers on a daily chance lotto ticket you win one daily chance collection item.
If you have 4 matching numbers on a daily chance lotto ticket you win 7 Godfather points (this number seems to change from time to time).
If you have 5 matching numbers on a daily chance lotto ticket you win 500 Godfather points (this number seems to change from time to time).
An advantage to having large (hopefully 5000 members) Mafia is what some like to call "auto-play". When you have a large mafia, you will find many times that you get experience points from no where. These come from your character being automatically drafted to assist in those jobs and fights that the people in your Mafia do from time to time. Each time you automatically help out, you can receive anywhere from 1 - 10 experience points. These points add up, as you can sometimes level up 3 times in one night, while sleeping! Hence, the term "auto-play", because having a big mafia means more chances for your character to join in on other's jobs and fights for money and experience (as well as the chance to level up as you sleep).
- If you don't have at least 501 members in your Mafia and 501 of each weapon, armor and vehicle, then you *should* avoid attacking those on the attack list that have 501 members in their Mafia. If you want to Attack; then try and target those with a smaller Mafia instead. This may be plain a simple tip, but sometimes you're ego may get in the way of rational thinking! Trust me: you want to build up your statistics to have as many fights won, instead of having a disappointing losing record. This serves a dual purpose: one to intimidate those who are thinking about attacking you; and two, to make you a better candidate for “Top Mafia” positions. No one will want to promote you if you lose more than 1/3 of the time!
Once you are on the Hitlist, all limitations of people *NOT* being able to attack you below 20 health points are gone. Typically people cannot attack you if your health meter is less than 20 points. But once you are on the Hitlist, its pretty much anyone's game! It means that they can (and will) keep attacking you until your health meter is 0. So don’t think you can just get on the Hitlist, get below 20 health points and master the “Bulletproof” achievement that easily….
- In the new upgrades, when clicking on a help request, you can also ask for help on behalf of the original requestor. DO NOT click on that button that says "Get Help" after finishing helping the person already! This simply takes away from the quota of others (currently, there is a 25 job per city, per day limit) to get experience and the proper $$$. Likewise, if you see one of these requests for help, ignore it. It simply isn't worth it! Avoid it, and send Zynga the message that it’s not really a bonus feature in anyway.
- Remember: when buying weapons, armor and vehicles that you need to have enough income coming from properties in New York to cover their expenses. There is a maintenance fee on most of the more powerful weapons you buy in New York. These fees come out of your pocket each time you go and “collect your take” from the properties you own in New York (this doesn’t really apply to you if you have Rackets). Just remember to keep an eye on the “up keep” of the weapons/armor/vehicles you buy and to make sure you have more than enough income (in the form of properties) to cover them. Typically, if you buy a Mafia Mike’s, it will cover the cost for three of your Mafia to be outfitted with a weapon, armor and vehicle. Hence the reason why we suggest you buy as many Mafia Mike’s as possible.
When adding new friends to your mafia, be sure to wait an hour or so from the time that they are newly added as your friend in Facebook. The connection between Mafia Wars and Facebook seems to lag a lot, and can cause many wasted invites and frustration. Remember, you need those invites, so use patience when sending them out.
When you are starting off, as stated before, it is best to have 501 of the top weapons. Hence, once you have enough money, buy weapons to make sure you have 501 even of the minimal weapons you buy. In the case of a low level starting player; 501 town cars; 501 chain guns and 501 Body armor are essentially the minimal basic equipment you should have to continue on.
If you decided to choose "mogul" for your character; the optimal time to collect your take from your properties is roughly 22 hours from the time you last collected. You have to wait until it hits maximum, and then collect at that precise moment to have the advantage. Hence, being a mogul sucks! Plus that time keeps moving you two hours ahead each day, which makes it a real pain to collect at the optimal time!
- Hitlisting someone is generally a bad idea - unless they are consistently attacking you for no reason. By Hitlisting another player; that person who gets Hitlisted, now knows who Hitlisted them, and has a link to your profile in their news feeder; which further allows them to attack you in the future. Some people are really “poor sports” when it comes to playing this game… so you need to be extra cautious sometimes; and sometimes, it means you have to be the bigger person and let certain things be.
- Currently, there is a "Declare War" feature in Mafia Wars that allows you to declare war on any of your Mafia friends. However, be careful of who you declare war against. Most people probably won't care; but once in a while, there is someone who will “un-friend” you and then will start attacking you relentlessly. Again, there are those “poor sports” you need to think about. Typically I would send out a message first before picking someone to attack out of the blue, just to make sure they are okay with it and that it is all in good fun!
- Be careful when attacking someone on the attack list with a tag like "{WMKP}" (or replace WMKP inside the curly brackets with whatever you want) in front of and/or behind their Mafia Wars names. That means they belong to a group (probably a large one) that can be called upon to theoretically have all their higher level members attack you until the game is no more fun! If that happens… you probably have no choice but to stop playing that character, abandon it, and start fresh with another account.
When doing jobs, sometimes it comes up with "ask friends for help". Click on this as many as possible (typically one a day in each city). The more mafia that come to help you, the more money you will receive and the more experience. Likewise with your friend’s: from time to time you will see (in your Live news feed): Howard (or whatever your friend’s name is, replace it here) needs your help; and typically a logo stating something like “rob your cab driver” beside it. These are job help requests your friends are posting, and not only give your friend a chance at some extra money and experience points, but also give you a chance for extra experience points and money. Of course, keep this in mind: you can only help out 25 times in each city; so you can’t just keep doing these help requests to level up all day.
- If someone is constantly attacking you and is being a poor sport; try joining a "revenge group" and posting their link! YES, Mafia Wars revenge groups do exist in Facebook groups and are filled with some higher level players that go out of their way to distribute revenge to those really nasty and abusive players. For example, there is a group called OKMC; which is a specific group of Mafia Wars players that will help you get revenge on abusive players.
Don't waste money on boosts. The boosts they currently offer are not worth the money; and quite frankly they do nothing for you anyways.
- Some weapons look nice, but have really no ability at all. Still, if you are looking at acquiring weapons, just for the sake of collecting, your best time do so is during sales. Just recently, having seen the 2009 Black Friday sale, there were many heavily discounted items up for grabs. So save your GF points for events such as that to do all of your shopping.
- When doing wall jobs, and you have an over abundance of wall posts; you should actually open the link in a new window/tab using the right-click method on the mouse. When you do this, as the new window you opened loads, you can refresh the original page to see if another job has been posted and also right-click the link on that. This way you can maximize the jobs you get and the $$$ as well the experience.
When sending out a gift from the free gift page, consider what you are sending out and to whom. Try and avoid sending out gifts to higher level players and instead target lower level players. Why? Because I'm sure higher level players have enough cue-balls and King of Spades to help out 300 lower level people who need one. Short story, high level people don't need it, and may choose to ignore the gift; which in the end wastes their time and your gift request.
- Check player updates from time to time on the homepage of your Mafia Wars window. It will publish many jobs and wars that are started that don't get posted on someone's wall. Also, if someone declares (declared) war on you; it will show up here. If you are apart of someone's top Mafia and some declares war on that person; it will also get posted here, so you have a chance to defend your friend. I find many valuable experience points and wars to participate in this way.
Having a bigger Mafia allows you to launder more money. You can launder up to five times a day (before the Feds get suspicious!). However, having a smaller mafia means you may only launder once or twice a day! Also, having a large Mafia means more people can help you launder, which means more money and experience for everyone involved.
Proceed to Chapter 2 - Growing your mafia and choosing the right players
Use multiple pimps to get to grow your mafia. Pimping services are all over Facebook to help you add friends just for certain games, such as Mafia Wars. It only makes sense to use their services to help grow your Mafia; and it only makes sense that using more than one will help your chances of growing faster… well… better! I suggest joining/becoming a fan of groups such as: SCP (Stone cold pimps) and Mafia Wars Pimpettes (as they are some of the top pimping groups for Mafia Wars).
- When first starting off, you can’t really get pimped right away (unless you pay for it!). Therefore, you can start off by adding people to your friends/mafia by simply adding the people that a pimp may suggest. If you go to SCP (Stone Cold Pimps) and check their wall, you will see a list of posts that keeps going and going of people they recommend you add to your Mafia. When you are first starting off, I highly recommend you go down the wall and add as many as you can and keep doing this for a couple of hours (or days). It is a highly effective way of getting noticed; plus you know these people will be added to your Mafia, as they have the same objective as you: to grow their Mafia as fast as possible.
- Once you have finished adding people from the wall of a certain group/pimp (as suggested in the previous tip); you can go to other pimping groups and do the same thing. Keep doing this, until you have a list of 200 or so friends/Mafia members. After you reach 200 or more friends added, you should now have a large enough list to be able to do some of the stuff to get yourself pimped. Typically, you need to suggest a certain pimping group/site to your friends who are not already a part of the group you are looking to get pimped at. Of course, the more people you suggest the group to, the better off you look and higher chance you have of getting pimped yourself.
- Remember to read the rules of each pimping group. They all have similar rules, but some have different ones you may need to follow to get properly pimped. Typically most frown on people who spam themselves on their posts (people who comment on a post by saying ‘add me’ or something towards that effect). Simple rule of thumb, be respectful and follow the rules if you want to get pimped.
- If you have no idea which pimping groups to join (or become a fan of); look at another friend's list of groups, and fan pages. Specifically find a friend with a large Mafia (600+), and look at his/her groups he/she has joined. Most often, you will see they have joined multiple groups to help gain Mafia members, so most of the work they have done is now available at your fingertips. Look at the various groups, find some good ones and join them.
- When looking for a top notch pimp; look at how many fans (or members if it’s a group) there are attached to the group. Some pimps are relatively new and only have a few thousand fans/members; while others have been around for a while and have a few hundred thousand fans/members. Obviously you want to use the ones with the most fans/members to get the highest success rate of adding the most members, so join those. However; keep an eye on the smaller ones as well, as they give you the best chance of being pimped! (Typically larger pimps may take time to pimp you versus the smaller groups).
- When looking for a top notch pimp; go and read their wall and see how often they post links and actually pimp out their members! Obviously you want groups that are more active and actually posting to their wall to get people pimped.
There are other groups you can join in Facebook, such as the “Mafia Wars Officers”, you can join to help build up your Mafia size. In such groups, you typically start adding people who post their link on the main wall; and you post your link on the wall as well asking for people to add you. Although this method is less successful than pimping; if you are consistent at it (always posting on the wall and adding people); you can easily add a few dozen new Mafia members in a couple of hours. Hey, each member adds to the 5000 goal! Just remember that!
Top Mafia Selection: As you know, who you select as your “Top Mafia” has a big difference in how your character will play the game. Use the following below to select the right players as your “Top Mafia”:
Choosing your Mastermind:
Find anyone in your mafia that has completed 50,000 jobs to get the max 11% bonus.
Choosing your Wheelman:
Must be a "Fearless" type and is over level 300 to give the max 11% bonus.
Choosing your Buttonman:
Must be a "Maniac" type and is over level 300 to give the max 11 point bonus.
Choosing your Bodyguard:
Find anyone in your mafia that has won over 50,000 fights to get the max 11 point bonus.
Choosing your Safecracker:
Find anyone in your mafia that has completed 50,000 heists to get the max 15% bonus. Warning, this will be tough, unless you find someone who was playing Mafia Wars prior to September, when they “temporarily” removed the "robbing properties" feature.
Choosing your Bagman:
Must be a "Mogul" type and is over level 300 to give the max 15 point bonus.
- Whatever you do in terms of picking your “Top Mafia”; make sure to try and get the best “Mastermind” and “Wheelman” possible, and they give you the max points. This is crucial in game play if you want to get the maximum value for doing jobs in the game and leveling up.
Try and add people (as friends, then Mafia Family) who have a lot of fights or like to fight lots (you can find this statistic on their page in Mafia Wars). People who tend to like to fight more often will give you better chances at gaining extra experience points – whether you are playing or not; since you will get a chance to join/help them every time they fight. This adds to the strategy of “auto-play” that is discussed above.
A big reason for adding lower level players is that; low level players tend to level up easier and faster than (most) higher level players. Hence, you will have more chances to get bonus experience points with a lower level player than a higher level player. I also find, most lower level players play consistently to advance; while many higher level players, once they have achieved everything in the game, tend to slow down in their play.
- If you wanna grow your Mafia, as well as have protection in numbers (and once you are at a higher level, you can offer it); then we suggest you might seek out a clan to join. Some even join multiple clans; but the basic premise is that very few will try and pick on you if you are tagged and show that you belong to a big (and powerful) clan.
- Although a slower way to grow your Mafia; if you don't like the idea of getting "pimped" and doing all that work; you can still join those pimping groups to add people to your mafia. They will publish/post a list (via your wall or your mail in Facebook) of people you can add as your friends, and subsequently Mafia. These people are specifically looking to add people and grow your Mafia, so rest assured you won't be wasting your time adding these people if you are looking to grow your Mafia as well.
Proceed to Chapter 3 - Properties
When buying property in New York, it is best to buy in lots of 10. This is the cheapest and most efficient way to buy properties inside the game. If you buy each property one at a time, as you progress, you will end up paying almost 50% more than someone who is buying in lots of 10 as suggested here.
Remember to collect your take in a timely fashion. If left alone for long enough, the game simply shuts down all your properties and it stops making you money.
To achieve the cashing out award, you have to sell 50 mega casinos. The best approach to achieving this is as follows: buy 10 commercial lots, then buy 10 mega casinos and sell them instantly. Repeat the process 4 more times and you should get your award. This method is the cheapest way to get the award.
When selling property, consider this: you only get back 50% of the value of what its worth. So be careful when considering selling a property, even if it is to buy insurance.
