A Brief Introduction
The game is broken into a few key objectives. There is a level based system that rewards you and your friends for your continued growth in levels. There is an economic engine that rewards you for making smart choices and converting as much of your earned income into passive income as possible. There is also a social networking aspect that rewards you for having more and more friends playing with you, whether it is from signing up the friends you already have or making new friends who are already playing. The game is fun, addictive, and best of all can be played well with a minimum daily investment of time.
Your first time in
When you log in for the very first time, there will be a little spiel to get you excited, a picture of your first property – Uncle Louie’s Deli – and a bar with your initial stats. These stats are what you will spend most of your time tracking.
Cash
Every hour your properties will pay out and any items you have with maintenance costs will deduct from your earnings. On the Properties tab which you will see later you can always see how much you are making and how much it is costing you. See the Property Moguls section of the guide for a better breakdown on earned vs. passive income and how to maximize this. It is also worth noting you have a bank account that you can store money in, but any money in the bank will not be reflected here.
Health
This is a fairly meaningless stat and it is the only naturally replenishing stat that the game will not show you a timer on. It is critical in boss fights which are outlined in great detail in the Doin’ the Job section. Other than that, it just sets the amount of times you get attacked when a hit is put out on you and how many fights you can engage in before healing.
Energy
Energy is the principal source of your earned income and a large chunk of your XP. It will come back 1 point every 5 minutes. Doin’ the Job will give you a thorough breakdown on leveraging your energy as well as discussing the speed leveling technique utilizing energy. Jobs and items will be your initial focus once you get in to the game.
Stamina
This also regenerates at one point every 5 minutes. Stamina is used to try to attack other players, rob other players, cash in on a hit on another player, sucker punching, and placing hits on other players. Fightin’ and Robbin’ will get in to all the specifics of how you can leverage your stamina, win more fights, get robbed less often and all those great details. Outside of jobs, this is the only other way to generate XP.
Do Something About It!
The game will walk you through a simple series of examples of what the game contains once you are completely free to make your own choices. The first job is exactly what most will be about… You spend X energy for Y experience, some amount of money, and with some jobs, a small chance at special loot. Enjoy this first one as you will never get 2 or more experience per energy later in the game. And congratulations! You got a loot item and a dummy NPC to invite in to your mob to get to size 1! We will talk more about Mafia size later and the Fightin’ and Robbin’ section has a lot more to say. Next you will make your first attack and then buy your first property and the first real decision comes in to play.
Choosing your Character type
You can change your name later, but there will be a fairly hefty cost, so think about how you would like your Mafioso name to be. "Don" plus your last name works well and the game supports multiple people with the same name. Default Don is the most common name out there followed by all the characters from the Godfather. The more unique and memorable your name, the more thematic some of the in game text will be for your friends. As for character type, here is a break down on what the choice entails. Currently, there is no way to change it once you make it, so consider carefully.
Mogul
As a Mogul your cash flow will come in every 54 minutes rather than every hour for the other character types. As a Mogul you are also the only character type eligible for being a Bagman. As a Bagman in one of your friend’s Top Mafia, you have the change to get double money from performing jobs. Since we want to be generating passive income rather than earned and there is no real use for money anymore once you get to around level 40, this is the least interesting of the character types unless your friend group happens to need more eligible Bagmen options.
Maniac
As a Maniac, your energy regenerates at a rate of 1 every 3 minutes instead of 5. You also become eligible to be a Button Man which gives you a chance to automatically win any fight you initiate. General consensus on the web before the Top Mafia changes was this was the best type to choose since energy drives a lot of your leveling. The flip side to this is if you are speed leveling, you are counting more on the energy refills from leveling up and Energy Paks than from natural regeneration. The special Top Mafia ability is not very exciting as we will only be initiating fights we expect to win anyway. Basically, it boils down to out of the 5-10% of fight you will lose to Critical hits, you will win about 5% of them instead.
Fearless
As a Fearless character your health regenerates at a faster rate. You also have the ability to be a Top Mafia Wheel Man which has the best special ability. Whenever you perform a job, there is a small chance that job will cost no energy. Since at higher levels jobs can cost as much as 60 energy to run, this is a very non-trivial bonus and will greatly aid the speed at which you level. The health regeneration itself is not a very meaningful bonus since using the hospital to top off at any point in time is a non-issue.
Your initial Skill Points
After you make your decision, you will get your first skill points to spend. It is highly recommended you just upgrade your Energy till at least 30 before touching the other stats. See the speed leveling section under Doin’ the Job for more details on spending your initial skill points.
It’s time for another tips session, and this time, it’s off to the mafia. Mafia Wars seems like a simple game at first glance, but once you get into it, it actually begins to become somewhat complicated with hits, different jobs, adding members, equipping all of them, and so on. What do you buy? What quests do you do? How should you level? These are all questions that are posed by new players, and it can be a bit daunting. Well, we searched high and low for ways to help you out, and hopefully these tips and tricks will help those new players that simply feel overwhelmed.
So you’ve started Mafia Wars and you’re not sure where to start, well, the first choice is easy enough: Pick a “Maniac” class (I'm a Mogul though). While earning more cash or health might seem appealing, energy is what allows you to do quests and it is significantly better to earn both cash and experience instead of just one. That said, it’s time to get down to business.
DO NOT add to you mafia right away. Yes, you do want a large mafia to be stronger, but if you are ill-prepared, this is going to hurt more than help. Essentially, you want to have a “Mafia Mikes” and a “Bloody Chainsaw” (please note, that the bloody chainsaw is a special item bought from the home page and will periodically change. For all intents and purposes, the special item tends to have similar stats, and is often interchangable if the chainsaw is gone) for every two members. Here’s the thing though, the game bases the amount of members you need for another one of these items based on your current members. So say you bought a chainsaw with a mafia of 12, but then added 8 people, you’ll now need 22 members to buy another one, thus losing out the extra chainsaws you could have bought at 16, 18, and 20 members. Assuming that you are now equipping properly, it is time to spend some experience points.
Ideally, you want to put all of your points into energy so you can level faster. Since quests are going to be your primary source of experience and cash (hence why you used maniac), your limiting factor is how fast your energy recharges. Furthermore, energy resets every level, so having an high energy and a fast regeneration can get you to higher levels exponentially faster. Of course, you will want other stats eventually (when that is, is completely up to you), but this will give you a nice start.
Okay, so now you’re leveling at a nice pace and you’re getting those Mafia Mikes and Bloody Chainsaws when you should. What’s next? Why, equipping your mafia of course, and this can be done either via looting or buying. In general, it is better to loot in higher missions, but if you want to be safer, just buy, and if you’ve been doing what’s been said so far, money shouldn’t be a serious issue. The recommended equipment is as follows (once you can buy them of course):
- Weapons: Bloody Chainsaws should be available to half your mafia (since you’ve been buying them every two members right?), thus the other half should utilize the Chain Guns (.50 Caliber Rifle is better once you start looting).
- Armor: Body Armor all around – period. Yes, you can buy other stuff too, but this is a definite purchase.
- Cars: Secondary to armor and weapons, but if you must have one, the Towncar comes recommended.
This should be more than enough to get you started on the right track in Mafia Wars. However, before things get wrapped up, here are some other interesting tips found around the web that should work for both the MySpace and Facebook versions of the game.
- Avoid the Hitlist as best as possible. While it might be fun at higher levels, drawing attention to yourself at lower levels is just going to get you killed over and over again by high level players. Stay under the radar as long as you can.
- If you ever attack someone and get the maximum amount of cash ($70,000), bookmark them and attack them as often as possible.
- When you do start using other stats besides energy, it is best to keep attack and defense equal.
- (MySpace Version) More Energy – Send an energy pack to a friend along with the message, then go to your MySpace page and click on the link (the image) and you will send one to yourself.
- (MySpace Version) Beat the Bank 10% – Annoying, but if you deposit $9 at a time you will beat the system.
- Best Early Cash & Experience Jobs:
o Level 1 – 4: Auto Theft
o Level 5 – 8: Bank Heist
o Level 9 – 12: Museum Break In
o Level 13 – 17: Wiretap the Cops
Credit to Christopher Mack of Inside Social Games...
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