Fight!

I have been hooked on to this game for the last 4 months or so. No wonder it has more than 7 million players playing it online, and growing. What a journey it has been beginning as a street thug and making my way up. Which still continues. So it is only obvious that I do some justice to a thing that takes up a lot of my daily time, the thing that is the most important reason I log on to facebook.

Mafia Wars Guide by Abhishek Pandey :D

So you have entered the big bad world of virtual mafiosi and are now beginning to make some strides. Wondering how to optimise your game play so that you enjoy the max while moving through the ranks the fastest? Read on....

First things first, I have made a lot of mistakes, hence my guide is all the more "authentic".

The best character is "Maniac". If you have chosen "Mogul" because you had no idea that making money fast has no value in this game and it actually is the weakest character, well, welcome to the boat. A lot of people including me have made that mistake. But you can't change your character mid way. You can't even remove that application and start all over again because Zynga does not delete your character for 90 days after you have removed the application! But Mogul is not all that bad, after me and my friends have achieved a lot in the game with the "weakest" character. It just requires more patience than Maniac.

Right, so what is the game all about?
Doing Jobs. Leveling up. Fighting. Leveling up gives you refills of your health, energy and stamina, which you can use to do even more jobs and achieve greatness.

How to develop your character?

* Start by adding mafia. Tons of them. More mafia means:
1> More attack and defence strength used to win fights.
2> More people to give you gifts, energy packs, help during fights (rallying troops for more experience, taking bullets for less loss, finding loot), boosts and helps for jobs, laundering money (experience and money), chance to benefit while doing jobs/fights if someone adds you to their top mafia, fighting a guy on whom you set a booty (supari in bhaigiri language), even winning wars against your friends.
In short, the chance to get experience and money without spending energy or stamina. Also helps in many achievements.

The gifts and loots that you receive help you complete vault collections as well as increase your attack/defence strength. There is no limit to the number of mafia you can add. The game anyways picks up your top 500 mafia for fights, so you need not worry about stopping there. How to add other people in your mafia? Go to http://forums.zynga.com/forumdisplay.php?f=36 and to the thread "Add me Facebook *one post per thread*". It has hundreds of posts per day by actual players wanting to increase their mafia. You have to add people in your facebook friends list before you can add them to your mafia. And if you add starting from the last page, they will accept your request and add you to your mafia in minutes if not seconds. There is a limit to how many people you can add per day on mafia wars (I think it is 24), but there is no limit on how many you can add on facebook. So add as many as you can, and wait for a couple of days for them to add you. Now whether to keep those friends in your facebook after they are a part of your mafia or not list is your wish, but keeping them in your list has certain advantages. E.g., you can get experience on doing jobs that they post on their walls only if they are in your list, otherwise you just get a token amount in $ (if you help them via your live feed on mafia wars home page). The only bad thing about adding random people is that they clutter your facebook feed with posts. There are people who play 24/7, and their "xyz had just iced abc and is offering you a bonus" message can get irritating after a limit. Alternatively, you can keep them in your friend list and remove such posts using scripts like greasemonkey.
Within a week you can make your mafia grow by 250! So start right NOW.
The benefit you get to attack/defence, war participation and even gifting is available even if you remove them from your facebook friend list.

* Spend skill points wisely:

You have a choice between three types of characters:
1> The energy junkie.
You only spend your skill points to your energy and level up fastest focusing on jobs with highest exp ratio. You don't mind losing all the fights when someone attacks you
2> The fight junkie
You spend your skill points on stamina, Attack and Defence and very few on energy. You fight your way to glory and are more content by pounding people rather than watching the blue exp bar move towards right.
3> The middle man
You wisely balance between energy and Attack/Defence. You do jobs as much as you fight. You don't particularly level up fast like the energy junkie but you don't lose many fights like him.

I chose 3rd for a large portion of my time, but later found that my friend who had a modified version of 2 was much better off. Reason? The experience you get with fights is close to 3 per stamina spent, (averages out with 1,2,3,4, and 6 exp per fight won) while the best exp paying jobs won't give you more than 1.7 exp ratio per energy spent.
My friend had not put any points in attack/defence as well, and still he was winning fights! I discovered that stat points (Attack/Defence) has little bearing on winning fights, (zynga never declares the formula they use to determine who will win the fights, and is subject to a debate involving millions of people), but the size of the mafia matters the most. So if you are level 250 with only 20 attack, but 501 mafia size, you will cream (even) a level 280 guy if his mafia size is 50 or 100 and defence is 200. And there are many such jokers to be found on the fight list whether it is cuba, new york or moscow.
To illustrate, just today I finished 50 stamina on fights and got 150 experience in spite of losing 3-4 fights on the way!

One important thing to be noted is that your mafia attack/defence strength for fights is calculated on your loot items (not on your bought weapons/armor/vehicles except body armor and town cars). Also, gifting your mafia loot items with attack/defence will decrease your strength. So when you read about "equipping your mafia", it is NOT the same as "gifting weapons/armor/vehicles to your mafia", it just means having more loot items or buying items to compensate for not having enough loot.

So NEVER EVER put any points on health. Put it only on energy and stamina. Don't put points in your attack/defence after a certain point. You anyways get a lot of free stat points on vaulting collections (attack/defence/energy/health).

When to use energy packs?
You need to use energy packs wisely, as you can use them only once every 23 hours, and they can make 0 energy to 1.25 of your max energy. The best point to use energy pack sent by someone is when you just finish your entire energy that you get after you have just refilled it by leveling up. That means, you should wait before using energy pack if you are just a few exp away from leveling up. Once you level up, finish the energy, and then click on use energy pack.
With tweaking around, you can develop strategies on leveling up. E.g. I used to do max exp ratio jobs before leveling up. As soon as I leveled up, I used to do least exp ratio jobs, then use energy pack, then again do least exp jobs. By the time I finished that energy, I was already at next level. Then I switched again to max exp ratio jobs. I used to level up twice a day with that strategy. I have modified that strategy to level up thrice a day after getting "Golden Throne" by finishing New York. It involves fighting to get the remaining experience after spending energy. With 100 stamina, you can level up even 7 times a day if you play like a maniac.

Boss Fights:
Do not enter boss fights until you have put your money in the bank. Also, do not enter into boss fights until you have enough shivs/stun guns (there is no need of a getaway driver, I never used one). Don't do boss fights more than once, since their exp payout is pathetic despite their claims.

How to make good money?

New York:
During our times we had properties, and we had to buy more properties for more cashflow. You will most probably have "rackets". I am not aware of how these work, but have heard that they can be more lethal than properties if used correctly. Hunt for guides on rackets on zynga forum. I am sure you will find more than one.
Just keep on building cash flow. Keep banking money. People who win fights against you won't win your money if it is in bank. Once you hit a cash flow of say 1 million $ an hour, you can stop going to bank forever. Since banking will cost you 10% of money, and it becomes much more of a loss losing 1 million dollars on banking 10 million than losing 5-6 fights and 5-600,000 $ before you get iced. Once you are iced (under 20 health), no one can loot money from you until your health recovers over 20.

Cuba/Moscow:
Here, you need to keep selling your stuff to make money. Here, you need to keep all your money in the bank at all times, because here there is no assured cashflow per hour. Instead, how much you make depends on whether you can sell your goods before they hit the maximum capacity.
One important thing I learnt is that while upgrading your businesses, upgrade only on QUALITY and OUTPUT (Quantity). Upgrade capacity only in the end. Since you can log on once every 9/12 hours to sell your crates anyways. And investing in quality and output gives maximum gains.

There are achievements related to trillion dollars and above for New York. It is impossible to get those with properties. There are guides on zynga forum on how to make trillion dollars, but it involves doing absolutely nothing else for months. So don't bother about them now. But do increase your cash flow as much as possible.

Gifting:

Gifting, as I mentioned before, has many benefits. Now when we start, we all make the mistake of gifting precious collection items (cards, rings etc), consumables (read more about them below), even items with good defence/attack like canonazo/tnt etc. While it is your wish what to gift, you will find that in the long run, you will regret sending an item if you can't vault a collection just because one item is missing, or if you are stuck in a new york job just because you have run out of consumables.
So while gifting, DO NOT give away any consumable, which are:

In New York:
Concealable Camera
Computer Setup
Untraceable cell phone
Blackmail Photos
Illegal Transaction Records

In Cuba:
Politico Corrupto
Untraceable cell phones

In Moscow:
photos of leaders
Concealable Cameras/Untraceable cell phones (based on your choice of vory/mafiya)

Consumables are the most irritating part of New York. I know of many people who have not completed New York just because they ran out of consumables. To put things to perspective:
You will require 368 Blackmail Photos just for Boss tier. And you need to spend energy on first getting concealable cameras, then spend energy AND concealable cameras on getting Blackmail photos. Plus, it is not guaranteed that if you do the specific job to get these drops, that you will get those items. That means, if you do the "obtain compromising photos" job in New York 10 times, you spend 10 concealable cameras, and for all you know, you might get only 3 or 4 blackmail photos!

So NEVER EVER give away consumables.

While gifting, a higher level person might not appreciate all your gifts. So gift prudently. I mean, when some low level guy gifts me brass knuckles or butterfly knife or lucky shamrock medallion, I get irritated a lot. They don't add anything to my attack/defence strength. I have much stronger items. So it is better to give a person what he or she has on his wishlist, as long as it is not a consumable or an item that you haven't vaulted yet. So do not give away any collection item until you have vaulted them at least once!

Also, you can trade gifts. I have used trading to complete a lot of my collections. Exchange with people willing to exchange.

Godfather points:

This is probably the only "revenue center" for Zynga. You can buy them with actual money. Hence it is understandable that these are the hardest to obtain. You get only one for leveling up twice. Sometimes there are promotions where you get free godfather points, like there was one during thanksgiving week (again, clicking on friends' post was required), plus you get 2-3 points if you become a "fan" of the application on facebook.

Where to spend Godfather points?
ONLY and ONLY one of the two:
a) Stat points (4 for 14)
b) Complete energy refill (1 for 10)

DO NOT spend it on anything else. I have wasted points on money before, many of my friends have wasted them on crates/buying consumables (20 points for 10 New York Consumables, 55 points for 3 mysterious crates etc), hence warning you.


General tips:

* Do not do Cuba and Moscow until you finish New York. Big Apple is frustrating but the payouts (especially Private island, Golden Throne) are worth it. My character was generating one energy every 5 minutes when I started out. It is now 2 every 4minutes & 30 seconds. I have used that to finish 5 tiers of Cuba (14 masteries) in 17 days flat.

* Look out for promotional events. There was a Big Apple week which helped many players to complete New York. I am hoping for a moscow week soon. It is tough!

* In case of any problems, do write to Zynga. They do respond, albeit after a long time.

* If you have some close friends playing MW, then ask them to promote you to Either their Mastermind or their Wheelman (only possible if your character is Fearless). The idea is to get maximum experience with least energy spent possible.


I guess this is a very exhaustive guide. But I have still left certain things for you to discover on your own. E.g. Whether to heal yourself at Cuban hospital if you fight in Cuba, is a decision you have to take. Also, I haven't mentioned on how to go about achieving achievements. Those are fun if you discover the best ways to finish them.

Have fun playing! And do forward it to other noobies.