Fight Club: The Daily Boar

While my initial Mafia Wars Hall of Shame post targeted Fight Club as a broken program, I have found a very good use for it. Unlike the Loyalty Program, which debuted improved rewards *after* the Hall of Shame Post, the Fight Club already had this benefit -- I should've looked harder before I criticized.


Now, Fight Club has gone from a daily bore to... home of the Daily Boar.
The daily Wild Boar, that is:

The Wild Boar is sitting quietly as an available reward at Fight Club Level 4, for 200 Victory Coins apiece. With its (43/43) stats, it eluded me in my initial review because my top 501 Weapons, Vehicles, and Armors have over 43 attack and defense.

But Animals are a different question - and if you're still using the 30-defense Riding Elephant in your top 501, or haven't gotten enough Chain Vipers, the Wild Boar is may be a nice upgrade for you on attack AND defense.

Once you hit Level 4, you'll have well in excess of the 200 Victory Coins to buy a Wild Boar:

Once I discovered the Daily Boar, and counted my 4,000+ Victory Coins as I advanced through Level 3 of Fight Club, I figured I'd purchase 20 Wild Boars the second I hit Level 4, and watch my Animal defense stats soar.

Not so fast: You can only purchase one Wild Boar every 8 hours - so pretty much twice a day unless you time it perfectly:

Fight Club doesn't feature another high-stat animal again until Level 11 - the Red Back Spider (33, 53):
At 500 Victory Coins a pop, and only one defense point ahead of the Xiamen Tiger, the Red Back Spider is hardly worth the wait. But if you're fighting anyway (and if you're fighting, you should be fighting in Bangkok... later post... ) your Fight Club level will increase anyway.

At Level 19 of Fight Club, another high-stat Animal awaits your arrival (literally and figuratively):
Just as the Red Back Spider barely edges the Xiamen Tiger, the Nile Crocodile is only one attack point higher - and many defense points lower - than the Diamondback (56, 48), available as drop Loot in Las Vegas Districts 6 and 7.


So the Wild Boar may be the best reward on Fight Club, in terms of a level that you can readily attain, and costing few enough Victory Coins that you can amass 20-40 of them quickly. Best of all, the Wild Board is 6 points **better** than the best defense-stats Animal available through your Wishlist (the Forest Scorpion) and only 3 attack points behind its Wishlist: Elite Eight counterpart, the Chain Viper.


While the Animals from Las Vegas District 6, 7, and 8 are superior to the Wild Boar - as are the Animals from the new Missions - and while Italy will likely reveal even better Animals - the Wild Boar has made Fight Club something worth fighting for.


View the Original article

Fight Club Tournaments

Even though I mostly play an energy account, I decided to investigate the new Mafia Wars Fight Club Tournaments.


The general gist of these tournaments are that you enter against other random opponents and fight in a bracket-style fight (single elimination) in order to see who the winner is. The winner then ends up with a collection piece, some $V, experience points, and Victory tokens (can be used to purchase items in the Marketplace under the "Fight Club" tab).

You can also bet $V on players (either yourself or others), which pay out odds based on their chance of winning.

However, it is a bit more complicated than that. On the next screen, you will see something like this:


So, apparently there are a ton of "weight classes", which are ranked below from easiest to hardest. At every "weight class" aside from heavyweight, there is a cap on your combined attack and defense (stat points) score and the number of members in your mafia.

Flyweight - capped at 10 attack and defense combined along with 5 maia members.
Bantamweight
Featherweight
Lightweight
Welterweight
Middleweight
Cruiserweight
Heavyweight - No Cap


However, in order to go to the higher brackets, you have to win in the previous rounds first! As far as I can tell, it is completely luck who wins in the early matches, given that everyone has at least 5 mafia and 10 attack/defense! That is the cap after all, so you can't go past that.

At any rate, within each weight class, there are three rankings: regional, national, and worlds. Each one seems to be more competitive (or at least you have a higher chance to lose). I'm not sure exactly how this works given the low cap (everyone should be at the cap in at least the first few matches).

I entered the regional championship and won. Here is what I got:


40 XP
10 "Fans" (determines your "Fame" and Rank - not sure what this does yet)
+5 Victory Tokens
+8,000 Tokens

I also bet the max on myself and won $V 300,000 back, which was pretty nice.

As far as Victory Tokens go, here is what the Fight Club screen reveals in the marketplace:


These items have some pretty good stats, but this is clearly very, very old. Who knows what the Marketplace will look like once they revamp this section (still has the old Top Mafia that appeared for a day or two!).



After winning at the regional level, the next match was nationals (still within the Flyweight bracket):


A little more expensive to enter... and I lost in the first round.

In between each loss, you must wait for 4 hours before you can enter again (or spend 8 Reward points!).

---

How to Win Fight Club Tournaments

I think I may have stumbled upon the answer of how to win capped fight-club tournaments:

First off, obvi0usly you want "Your Entry" (total mafia number and combined attack and defense skill) to be equal to whatever the cap is for the bracket you are trying to enter. Take a look at the picture below:

"Your fighting score is determined by your attack and defense skills plus the combined attack and defensive strengths of one weapon, armor, and vehicle item for each mafia member that you bring to fight."

So, it looks like we are going back to the old system where the maximum attack and defense of a single item does not matter but rather the important number is the combined offensive and defensive score.

With that said, for best chances of winning, try to collect 1 of the following items for the class you are entering in:

Weapon: Plasma Rifle (created in the Weapons Depot). Combined score of 87.

Titanium Katar (drops in episode 7 of Bangkok). Combined score of 85

Armor: Royal Thai Marine or Ninja (drops on Bangkok Episode 7 and 6, respectively). Combined score of 82.

Vehicle: Day Rider 2K (built in the Chop Shop). Combined score of 95.

Lamang Motorcycle (drops in Episode 7 of Bangkok). Combined Score of 83.

Animal: Bark Scorpion (random drop from doing jobs in Las Vegas). Combined score of 82.

---

I believe those are the 4 pieces best combined pieces that you can get multiple copies of without spending Reward points. I have included alternates for the Chop Shop and Weapons Depot categories as it will hard to get 500 of each of those pieces.

It is kind of funny after everyone (myself included) whined about how bad the Day Rider 2K was, but now it actually seems to have a use.

There are certainly better pieces out there, such as the Poison Dart Frog (animal with combined score of 96), which is a reward from the bonus spin of the slots. It seems that for the small brackets, having these items will go a long, long way.

View the Original article

Fight Club Now Live - Loot and Info

"Fight Club" is now live - players are able to participate in this new game function. By that I mean you don't really have a choice, now when you fight, you are automatically entered into this fight club.

Now, when you fight, you will see this mastery bar (much like in robbing):


Each time you win a fight, you gain some mastery. I believe you have to win about 150 fights to advance to level 2, and it moves up from there. It does not seem to matter whether or not the enemy is alive or iced; both seem to give fight mastery points.

Sometimes when you win a fight, you will get a Victory Coin. Victory coins can be turned in to buy items at the Marketplace under the "Fight Club" tab. Here is the loot list:








Okay, so that is a lot of items! Here is the general gist of it:

- Earn Victory Tokens in Fighting and Tournaments.

- Unlock levels of Fight Mastery to access better rewards

- Buy things with your Victory Tokens in the Marketplace.

Based on the achievements, it will take about:

- 16,000 fighting wins to reach level 12
- 34,000 fighting wins to reach level 15
- 61,000 fighting wins to reach level 18
- 100,000 fighting wins to reach level 21

---

Based off the sheer number of Victory Token requirements, it will take literally forever to get the 1,000 Tokens needed to buy something like the Nile Crocodile (57 attack, 37 defense animal). In short, we won't be getting much loot from the new Fight Club feature, unless you really want to use tons and tons of stamina.

Personally, I get bored of clicking "fight" and "attack again"; I don't think I'll be spending the few thousand stamina per day to fight people individually just for a single item.

There is one thing that interests me though! At level 20, it looks like players can purchase energy packs for 100 Victory Coins. Now that sounds like a good change to me!

View the Original article