Looking for help with Facebook Zynga Mafia Wars in New York? Then this is the place for you!
Hints and Tips to get you ahead in New York Mafia Wars.
If you are already playing the game and just looking for specific tips, browse the list on the left to find the information you are looking for.
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, you will be introduced to Uncle Louie's Deli and a bar with your initial stats.
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. 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 later in the game to have a reasonable amount of health otherwise you wont be lasting very long on this hitlist. 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. Doing 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, depending on your character type which we will discuss further. 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. Fighting and Robbing 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.
Choosing your Character type
You can change your name later, but this will be at a cost, so think carefully what 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. Keep into concideration that the more fancy your name is you could become a target so try not to make it insulting or tagging a name without being in a clan. 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 friends Top Mafia, you have the chance to get double money from performing jobs.
Maniac
As a Maniac, your energy regenerates at a rate of 1 every 3 minutes instead of 5. Once you gain the golden throne you will bet a rate of 2 every 2 and a half minutes! 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.
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.
The first Levels
Leveling up your character gets you access to bigger and better items, loot, and collections as well as providing more skill points to make you more efficient and deadly. Leveling can be as complicated or as simple as your time and playing style allows. Every job you complete and fight you win provides XP. Every time you level up, your health, energy, and stamina are reset to their current maximums and 5 more skill points are awarded.
Since your energy and stamina completely refill when you level, it is ideal to have almost none left when you top off the XP bar. On the same note, any extra XP left over when you level gets applied towards the next level, so finishing with a big job for heavy XP will give you the most spill over. Fights yield from 1-3 XP randomly with a chance for it to be doubled based on the size of your mafia. Most of your XP for any given level will come from doing jobs.
Each time you do a job, you will be awarded a payout in cash, XP as listed on the job, a bonus payout for the size of your mafia, a percentage of the job mastery, and a chance at a loot and collection item (depending on the job). The cash payout is fairly self explanatory. For a detailed treatise on the XP per job and the effects your Top Mafia has on these percentages, refer to Doin' the Job.
Job Mastery is important as for every level of Job Mastery, you are awarded an additional skill point. When all jobs within a given category, like Street Thug, are mastered at level 3, a special item with a bonus is awarded. You can not start leveling the next level of a job within a category until all jobs within that category have been mastered to the same level. So Job Mastery 2 for the Street Thug jobs won't be available until you have mastered all the jobs to Mastery level 1. Finally, for every fully mastered job tier, a title is awarded based on the category. This allows you to show other mafia families how far you have advanced. For the first tier, these are Street Thug, Skilled Street Thug, and Master Street Thug. Currently, Master Boss is the highest known title in New York
Special Loot items and the collections are discussed in more detail in Doin' the Job and you will also find a breakdown of what items need to be bought and found in order to do each job. If next to a job there is a red box frame around an item, it means you need to acquire that item in order to do the job. Early on, you just need to have it, but some later jobs will actually use up the item necessary to perform the job.
Early on, your best focus is to get the extra skill points from mastering jobs as quickly as possible and try to maximize the amount of spill over XP you have every time you are about to level. Collections and Loot can be focused on later. If your mafia is in solid combat shape, don't miss out on the opportunity to further speed your leveling by fighting with other families.
Starting over?
Unfortunately, the game currently does not really support anyway for starting over. If you are unhappy with your initial choices, you have to delete the application, wait 60 days for it to time out, and then log in again to get a clean start in the Mafia world. None of the choices you make outside of character type though can't be fixed, so we recommend you try to work with whatever state you are currently in. If you do wish to delete the app and wait 60 days, in the lower left hand corner of any Facebook page you should see a button labelled Applications. Click on it to open the menu and near the top of the menu you will see Edit. Choose this and then click on the x next to Mafia Wars to remove it as one of your applications.
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