Mafia Wars Italy Pre-Release Strategy

Mafia Wars is still promoting Italy as an October 2010 release so we are likely less than two weeks from the opening of a new city.

Taking a lesson from Vegas, try these three strategies when you are building your Italian empire:

[1] If you find that a level/job/district is dropping great loot, don't race through the levels. Instead, pile up the loot and improve your fighting/robbing/tournament stats. Don't you wish you were still at Bronze level in Districts 7 and 8 in Las Vegas? Energy accounts could get hundreds of top Vegas items with each refill... instead of the 2-3 I get for every 5,000 energy points...

[2] (hat tip to LP for this one): If you find a loot item in Italy that is giftable AND worth as much as/more than top Vegas items, get it in your wishlist fast.

Apparently, Diamondbacks and some other top loot were originally able to be added to your Wishlist when Vegas unveiled District 6. Soon after that, you could no longer add these items to your Wishlist. Only those MW players who already had the items on their Wishlists could receive them as trade. The rest of us waited until this week.

Use that strategy in Italy in case Zynga changes its mind and pulls a 180 in making valuable loot items "ungiftable." If you do, you won't have to wait for this "Improvement" (??) noted in Mafia Wars' release notes... as though the inability to gift high-end Vegas loot was all just one big misunderstanding.



(Faithful readers know that the Vegas loot/Wishlist switcheroo was really the work of The Wishlist Police ... click if you missed it the first time around).



[3] We know there is a new property in Italy - the Italian Villa. Perhaps it will be more like the Vegas casino than the disjointed properties from prior cities. If so, the Villa will require upgrade parts, like your casino, vault, Chop Shop, etc.
Hopefully, the items needed to build the Italian Villa will drop from jobs and be accessible through your Wishlist for gifts and trades - like the Vegas vault and casino items were, and Chop Shop and Weapons Depot upgrade parts are... and NOT like the Armory, which is pretty tedious.

Assuming Villa parts drop from jobs in Italy, here's a tip: don't trade or gift away all of your upgrade parts once you've finished building your Villa. Anyone remember the Vegas fountain? The new Chop Shop and Weapons Depot levels? Keep a few upgrade sets handy in case Mafia Wars expands the Villa after Italy debuts.

(Speaking of which... anyone concerned about what Mafia Wars might be planning to add in the very conspicuous empty space in the lower level of the Vegas Casino?)


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Final point - more of an "Easter egg" feature - perhaps unintended - and a neat walk down memory lane: Try this:
1. Click on Home.
2. Select Italy from your Travel Menu.
3. Once you see the full page Italy promo, click on the Travel Menu again.
4. Select Vegas, Bangkok, Moscow, or Cuba from the Travel menu.
5. Repeat for the other cities (not New York) if you like what you see.
It's like a Zynga time machine!




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Las Vegas Districts 7 and 8 - Loot and Strategy

Impressively, Zynga got two new districts of Vegas up just as the first people were finishing District 6 (which itself was an add-on). Let's start with the new loot in Districts 7 and 8, and then some ideas on mastering them.
District 7 - Area 51
X-22 Peregrine (53/24) - vehiclePitbull Sentry Gun (28, 52) - weaponPronghorn Antelope (21, 53) - animalAres Power Armor (33, 58) - armorFoo Fighter (37, 60) - vehicle (hard to find)Diamondback (56, 48) - animal (also a District 6 drop item)
Boss Item - Experimental Exosuit - armor (149, 90) for bronze through (185, 106) for Ruby
District 8 - Hoover Dam
Hopped Up Thug (56, 18) - armorCooling Vest (31, 61) - armorArcturiuon Assault Rifle (59, 27) - weaponRipper Assault Rifle (57, 30) - weaponBalista Missle Launcher (62, 15) - vehicleBighorn (26, 64) - animalAmphiquad (58, 24) - vehicle
Boss Item - Halloran's Helicopter - vehicle (90, 145) for bronze...
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A few thoughts here:
1. Halloran's Helicopter - even at bronze - will immediately be your top defensive vehicle. The boss - Governor Halloran - gets stronger and harder to injure as you go.
2. Experimental Exosuit - even at bronze - will immediately be your top offensive armor. The boss - Dr. Hank Williams - has two henchmen. LOAD UP ON STUN GUNS. You will find yourself using 6 to kill the henchmen alone on the Ruby level.
3. These are some serious stats for drop loot! Would you ever play in Cuba or Moscow again for loot? With attack and defense stats in the 50s and into the 60s, even Bangkok high end loot (BHEL, to use the trading group lingo) will drop on your rankings...
4. ...except that Vegas high end loot (VHEL) is not - readily - tradeable. You can't gift it, as you can with a Royal Thai Marine, or add it to your Wishlist through other MW websites. Though some people apparently are doing it...
5. For the energy jobs on Distrcits 7 and 8, you will need TONS of three items from earlier Districts in Vegas: Hot Tips (D2), Alarm Codes (D3), and Hotel Security Key Cards (D4). I mean TONS. This is like Bangkok on steroids when you needed Untraceable Cells for a few levels and then Satellite Phones forever. If you've already finished Ruby level on the lower Vegas Districts, you'll see that acquiring ONE such item requires up to 108 energy points. And District 7's final energy job requires ONE OF EACH (of alarm code, hotel key) - and get 2% mastery per job - so your "cover charge" for each job is 165 energy points just for the "tools" you'll need to do the final job in District 7, which itself is 144 energy. Total retail price for that ONE job? 15,450 energy points. So be patient.
One reader below commented on a strategy I've used in Vegas that I *wish* I'd used in Bangkok, and even earlier in Vegas. STOP FINISHING THE LEVELS OF THE TOP DISTRICTS SO QUICKLY. There is GREAT loot here - there are some things in District 7 that are as good as the District 8 loot (Foo Fighter, Diamondback). Or - at least - if you finish District 7's Ruby level, stay on Bronze level in District 8 for a LONG time - why not? You will get tons of the top loot in the game. Your stats will skyrocket. And until a new city or District comes along, why wouldn't you want to max out on all this great loot, which drops fairly generously?
Compare the slow climb of Distrct 7's Ruby level - 309 points PER JOB on the final job, doing it 50x, not to mention the other jobs on Energy and Fight Path. The final job on District 8 Bronze level, by contrast, requires no codes/tips/key cards... and costs 19 energy. NINETEEN. If you have an energy account with 4,000 to 5,000 points, you can do roughly 250 jobs and watch all the loot, boss fight items, casino upgrade items, vault upgrade items, Weapons Depot and Chop Shop parts and specialties, and the 4 new Vegas collection items (matchbooks, cactus, animals, card hands... more on these later) drop day after day. Just a suggestion - hold tight on District 8 bronze.
Folks, your Railguns and Mugatis and Hunters - and your Lamangs, Vipers, Marines, and Katars - should start to drop into the middle/lower tier of your weaponry with these great District 7 and District 8 items. Don't fly through it and find that you still have Zolotos and Shturmoviks as part of your top 501 items. Even the Bangkok Faction Store is close to obsolete - why spend your stamina points robbing properties to save up Baht to buy a Xiamen Tiger (52 defense) when at least two drop loot animals in Vegas beat it? Even the Banded Krait (51 attack) - a very expensive B$540,000 - is only 5 attack points higher than all your vipers, but 5 points LOWER than the Diamondback - which drops in Vegas Districts 6 and 7. If anything (since you can't amass 501 Diamondbacks unless you hold back in District 7 at Bronze for more drops), you should simply load up on Vipers, and use the Baht that you accumulate to buy Kraits or Tigers in the Faction Store. The rest of the merchandise is blown away by what you'll accumulate in Districts 6 and 7 in Vegas... so if you're robbing (and we're going to discuss HOW you should be robbing) it should be in... NEW YORK. More to come on that topic.
For more information on the Vegas MADE event on October 15 and 16, please see http://mafiawarsmade.eventbrite.com/ No - I don't work for Zynga and this blog will not be a shill for it - you will see plenty of critique and cheats as we uncover together the threadbare parts of the game (how's that Crime Spree feature working out for everyone??). But this event sounds like fun.
Good night for now, and good fighting.
Best,
-Phil



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Lotto Ticket Prize Strategy

With Daily Chance tickets, I've always saved up 6 and cashed them in for "up to 5 Reward Points." The other available prizes - a collection item, 1 or 2 more Daily Chance tickets, or a one-time energy or stamina boost, seemed to pale in comparison.




In the past, I can recall getting 5 RPs (or Godfather Points, as they used to be called), or 3, or even 1, but it seemed like a random number each time. Lately, that range of 1 through 5, I've been consistently getting 1 RP.



I've had this result 8 out of the past 9 times I've cashed in the 6-lotto ticket claim. Could it just be a bad run, or has Mafia Wars - which admittedly made RPs easier to get all around (heck, see the post below for 20 of them) - tightened up on this particular golden goose?



Anyone else noticing a trend like this? I wonder if Mafia Wars known how many RPs a given player has when he or she cashes in the "6 of 6" prize... and if some algorithm instructs Mafia Wars to reward fewer RPs as that player's RP total gets higher. After all, 1 RP is still "up to 5"... but not what you're hoping for every week.


That begs the question of whether it's better to claim a different prize that costs fewer tickets. Some players opt for the extra Daily Chance tickets, in the hopes of getting a Daily Chance Collection piece if they submit 12 tickets per week instead of 10.

The odds on winning that prize (3 out of 5 numbers) are sufficiently long that I'm not sure that 1 or 2 extra tickets per week materially improve your chances.
After all, now that you can get 12 to 20 lotto tickets per week, with bonus tickets from Mystery Bags and other sources, you'd think players would regularly hit 3 or 4 numbers out of 5 on a ticket if an additional ticket or two helped.

In my own experience (the results on the left being a typical example), I've still only gotten a Daily Chance Collection piece - 3 numbers out of 5 - once in 15 months of playing, and have never hit 4 numbers out of 5 for the lower Reward Point Prize, not to mention 5 for 5 and 1,000 RPs. You probably have better odds of hitting the jackpot on the Vegas RP Slot Machine.
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Instead, most weeks I find myself with a slew of Untraceable Cell Phones and other New York consumables, which I happily gift as I go. On occasion, I'll hit 2 numbers out of 5 and win a free Daily Chance Lotto ticket...getting me that much closer to the next "6 of 6" Claim Prize conundrum...

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