Mafia Wars How To Guide

Mafia Wars is a simple-to-play game that requires no more than a few clicks of the mouse. However, the strategy behind the game is complex and involves making careful decisions.

When first starting the game, it can be unclear what direction to take your mafia. Some players enjoy leveling up as fast as possible, while other players enjoy taking the game slow and acquiring wealth, items, and collections. Some players might try to build up the biggest mafia to fight other players, while others might focus on completing every job in each tier. Either way you play, there are a few basic strategies you must be aware of in order to maximize your Mafia Wars experience.

Completing Jobs

Jobs are a fundamental aspect of Mafia Wars. They assist in gaining levels, earning money, finding special loot, and collecting the 7 special items necessary to complete a collection.

When you first begin playing Mafia Wars, there will only be a couple of jobs that you will be able to complete. These initial jobs are a great way to earn some cash and get started building your mafia empire. As you progress through the levels you will be able to unlock new, more challenging jobs that may require special items, a certain mafia size, or a certain level to complete.

To complete jobs, click on the “Jobs” tab in the main menu of Mafia Wars. From there you will be able to see your available jobs, energy required, items required, and a button to perform the job.

Mastering Jobs

As you complete jobs, you will notice a ‘Job Mastery’ area that shows what percent you are to mastering a certain job. After you get every job in a job tier to 100%, you will reach level two job mastery for that tier. When you complete every job to 100% for a second time, you will reach level three job mastery. The rewards for each mastery level are below:

Mastery 1: Tier Title

Mastery 2: “Skilled” Tier Title; +5% to loot drops in that tier

Mastery 3: “Master” Tier Title; +10% to loot drops in that tier; bonus item

Mastering job tiers takes time and lots of energy, but in the end you will be paid off with beneficial bonus items that will offer permanent boosts to your mafia. The current bonus items for each tier are listed below (New York only).

Level	Bonus Item
Street Thug (lvls 1 – 4)	Pistol Bayonet: +4% damage dealt in fights
Associate (lvls 5 – 8)	Bugatti: -7% damage received in fights
Soldier (lvls 9 – 12)	Golden Skull: 30 second reduction on your health regeneration
Enforcer (lvls 13 – 17)	Money Plate: 5% discount on property purchases
Hitman (lvls 18 – 24)	Chainsaw: 30 second reduction on your stamina regeneration
Capo (lvls 25 – 34)	State Senator: 5% discount on property repairs
Consigliere (lvls 35 – 59)	Helicopter: 30 second reduction on your energy regeneration
Underboss (lvls 60 – 99)	Private Island: 5% bonus on job experience
Boss (lvls 100+)	Golden Throne: 2x energy regeneration

Recruiting Mafia Members

A larger mafia size is essential to advancing in Mafia Wars. More members allows you to complete more jobs, defend yourself from attacks, attack other mafias, buy special properties, and hire Top Mafia members which give you additional bonuses for jobs and fights.

To add more members to your mafia, click on the “My Mafia (X)” button in the main menu. The ‘X’ in parentheses dictates the current size of your mafia.

From the next page that appears you will be able to invite your friends to join your mafia. Note that 501 is the maximum size of any mafia (500 friends and yourself) so choose wisely!

Upgrading Your Character

As you level up your character by completing jobs or fighting other mafias, you will gain skill points. 5 skill points are awarded for leveling up and one skill point is awarded for mastering a job and mastering a job tier.

To use your skill points, click on the ‘Profile’ tab in the main menu. This will take you to a screen where you are able to upgrade your mafia’s attack, defense, stamina, energy, or health. Choose your point allocations wisely as you will not be able to undo them!

Mafia Wars Collections

What They Are

Mafia Wars collections are a group of seven items that are looted when completing jobs in a certain job tier. Different job tiers are unlocked as players level up. The higher the tier, the better the rewards and the better the collection.

Each tier has seven special items that can be looted and used to gain stat boosts and other gameplay advantages. The image below shows the seven items necessary to complete the Street Thug job tier collection.

How They Help

Mafia Wars collections are a great way for players to gain special boosts and advantages that are useful when completing jobs or fighting other mafias. The higher the tier collection, the better the boost will be. From additional stamina, to more energy, to a raised defense, all collections are designed to enhance your fighting capacity.

How To Get Collections

Collections can’t be bought. They may only be obtained by completing certain jobs in each job tier. You can view your collections by going to your inventory then clicking the collections tab. Once you have obtained all 7 items for each collection, click the Vault button to claim your boost.

It is also worth noting that collection items can be gifted. This means that if you have a large mafia, simply add an item to your wishlist and hopefully someone will send it to you.

New York Collections

Street Thug Tier

Diamond Flush Collection: +1 energy (Eight of Diamonds, Nine of Diamonds, Ten of Diamonds, Jack of Diamonds, Queen of Diamonds, King of Diamonds, Ace of Diamonds)

Associate Tier

Heart Flush Collection: +5 health (Eight of Hearts, Nine of Hearts, Ten of Hearts, Jack of Hearts, Queen of Hearts, King of Hearts, Ace of Hearts)

Soldier Tier

Boxing Collection: +3 attack (Hand Tape, Gloves, Headgear, Boxing Trunks, Speed Bag, Heavy Bag, Boxing Ring)

Club Flush Collection: +3 attack (Eight of Clubs, Nine of Clubs, Ten of Clubs, Jack of Clubs, Queen of Clubs, King of Clubs, Ace of Clubs)

Poker Chips Collection: +2 attack (White Poker Chip, Brown Poker Chip, Red Poker Chip, Blue Poker Chip, Green Poker Chip, Purple Poker Chip, Gold Poker Chip)

Sculptures Collection: +3 defense (Sculpture, Sheep Sculpture, Rooster Sculpture, Tiger, Sculpture, Snake Sculpture, Dragon Sculpture)

Enforcer Tier

Cigars Collection: +2 energy (Ebony Cigar, Sky Cigar, Rose Cigar, Ivory Cigar, Turquoise Cigar, Gold Cigar, Royal Cigar)

Spade Flush Collection: +2 stamina (Eight of Spades, Nine of Spades, Ten of Spades, Jack of Spades, Queen of Spades, King of Spades, Ace of Spades)

Billiard Balls Collection: +1 stamina (One Ball, Two Ball, Three Ball, Four Ball, Five Ball, Cue Ball, Eight Ball)

Hitman Tier

Rings Collection: +5 defense (Topaz Ring, Opal Ring, Amethyst Ring, Emerald Ring, Sapphire Ring, Ruby Ring, Diamond Ring)

Ties Collection: +6 defense (Solid Tie, Striped Tie, Checked Tie , Geometric Tie, Dot Tie, Paisley Tie, Knitted Tie)

Capo Tier

Paintings Collection: +6 energy (Warhol Painting, Cezanne Painting, Matisse Painting, Van Gogh Painting, Dali Painting, Monet Painting, Rembrandt Painting)

Cufflinks Collection: +10 health (Silver Cufflinks, Gold Cufflinks, Amber Cufflinks, Jasper Cufflinks, Agate Cufflinks , Onyx Cufflinks, Pearl Cufflinks)

Barber Shop Collection: +4 energy (Barber Pole, Razor, Brush, Seat, Towel, Scissors, Cream)

Consigliere Tier

Great Race Horses Collection: +7 energy (Mill Reef, Sea Bird, Arkle, Golden Miller, St Simon, Ormonde, Eclipse)

Cuba Collections

El Soldado Tier

Rum Drinks Collection: +8 energy (Pina Colada, Hurricane, Bahama Mama, Mojito, Rum, Runner, Long Island Ice Tea, Cuba Libre)

El Capitan Tier

Tropical Fruits Collection: +3 stamina (Banana, Lime , Pineapple, Papaya , Coconut, Passion Fruit, Dragon Fruit)

El Jefe Tier

Entertainers Collection: +10 health (Magician, Fan Dancer, Comedian, Band Leader, Cabaret Singer, Crooner, Burlesque Dancer)

El Patron Tier

Tropical Fish Collection: +5 attack (Pufferfish, Sergeant Major, Yellowtail Snapper, Great Barracuda, Queen Angelfish, Reef Shark, Blue Martin)

El Padriano Tier

Beards Collection: ­+7 defense (Garibaldi, Hulihee, Vandyke, Mutton Chops, Soul Patch, French Fork, Fidel)

Moscow Collections

Baklany Episode

Prison Tattoos Collection: +6 defense (Rose Tattoo, Church Tattoo, Star Tattoo, Spider Tattoo, Tiger Tattoo, Skull Tattoo, Crucifix Tattoo)

Boets Episode

Matryoshka Dolls Collection: +7 energy (Natalya’s Doll, Olga’s Doll, Oksana’s Doll, Svetlana’s Doll, Tatyana’s Doll, Anastasiya’s Doll, Ekaterina’s Doll)

Brigadir Episode

Russian Leaders Collection: +4 attack (Medal of Gorbachev, Medal of Yeltsin, Medal of Brezhnev, Medal of Kruschev, Medal of Putin, Medal of Stalin, Medal of Lenin)

Avtoritet Episode

Vodka Drinks Collection: +4 stamina (Cosmopolitan, Screwdriver, Sex on the Beach, Bloody Mary, Black Russian, White Russian, Soviet)

Vor Episode

Soviet Memorabilia: +10 health (Red Star, Kremlin, Communist Manifesto, Propaganda Poster, Hammer, Sickle, Bust of Lenin)

Pakhan Episode

Fabergé Egg Collection: +8 energy (Diamond Trellis Egg, Jade Egg, Military Egg, Pansy Egg, Rainbow Egg, Winter Egg, Peter the Great Egg)

Rollin' a Bankroll on Mafia Wars

Financial problems are fairly common in the low levels, though if handled early can stay completely solved for the remainder of your mob career. Whether you just don't have enough money to make the next purchase to unlock a job, can't afford to completely outfit your family, or you actually lose money every hour, here you will find general strategies to help guide you out of these problems.

One important consideration before we get into the exact details of how to roll a bankroll is whether or not you are truly completely broke. If you have no cash on hand, no money in the bank, and your income every hour is negative the good news is you can't drop below $0. There is no debt system in the game. If you go to the Properties tab in the game, you will see what you current income is, how much your current upkeep is, and the difference between the two that you make every hour. To get actual details on the upkeep, you need to go to the Inventory tab and scroll through the different lists in the Mafia store to see which items you own that are contributing upkeep costs.

Since the hitlist strategy to get your bankroll started is the most efficient, you will want to be able to keep some money aside for hospital bills so you can take a shot every 15 minutes without having to wait for your health to recover naturally. It is recommended that you sell off just enough of your high upkeep items, specifically Tommy Guns and Chain Guns, until you are at least making some money every hour again. Bank the proceeds from these sales so you don't lose the money while you experiment with rolling the bankroll up.

Workin' for a livin'

The most straight forward approach to making some money is just to do some jobs. At the low levels, specifically below level 24, you won't get as much from doing jobs as other players. Long term, passive income from properties will quickly exceed the money you can make running jobs.

As you are starting out, you will need the money from these first few jobs to be able to buy the equipment to try bigger and better jobs. This money will also provide the cash for your hospital bills. The best return from the first few jobs is "Collect on a Loan". It provides the most cash per energy from your initial choices and only requires you own a baseball bat which has no upkeep. See Doin' the Job to get further breakdowns of how much money the higher level jobs will pay as you continue to unlock them.

For making money from jobs, there are a few aspects of the current Top Mafia bonuses that should be discussed. You can assign the highest level Mogul in your family to the position of Bagman, and the higher their level, the higher percentage of bonus money you will make on the jobs. If you are someone else's Bagman (meaning you are a Mogul type yourself), there is a chance you will get the money from a job you perform doubled. Since the money you make from jobs will be quickly dwarfed by your passive income from properties if you follow the advice outlined here, these benefits will be barely noticeable.

Covetin' from your neighbor

If you don't have the money you need yourself, you can always look to make others share with you, whether or not they are willing. While your income is in the awkward stages of $250,000 an hour to $5,000,000 an hour, making money off other players will supplement your income better than any other source. Fightin' and Robbin' gets in the details of how to successfully win fights and succeed at robberies. Fights will generate money based on how much your victim has as cash on hand. Robberies generate money as a factor of the type of property your victim owns as well as the number of them he currently owns; however, you can't even attempt robberies until you are level 15 and it doesn't really become worthwhile until your victims have Office Buildings, 5-Star Hotels or Mega-Casinos.

In the level stretch before Office Buildings can be bought by you and your victims, fighting can help build your bankroll. You can get as much as $100,000 as the result of a fight. If you receive $0 from a target after fighting them, it means that all of their money is banked. You will want to go down the list of potential victims trying each one that you can beat once as usual, but any time you get at least $60,000 from your victim, you should continue to attack until they stop coughing up money. Make sure you bank your ill gotten gains as soon as you can as this behavior will most likely result in a hit being put on you. This is effectively meaningless though as long as your money is in the bank and you didn't bother going to the hospital after your rampage.

Once Office Buildings start to be available, robberies begin to provide more cash than fights. You can get from $200,000 a robbery on the low end to $855,000 on the high end from someone with 250 Mega-Casinos. Once again, you will make more money by hitting a juicy target multiple times, but this also will make it more likely that your victim will put a hit out on you. If your target does not have over 200 of the type of building you are targeting, I would recommend trying to hit a building just once or twice before choosing another target. This makes it much more likely your victim won't bother trying to get even with you.

Makin' the hit

Especially when you are first starting out, nothing comes close to performing hits for getting your initial bankroll started. As an experiment, we started up a new character and using this trick we were able to get our income up to $542,250 an hour without leveling. When you choose the Fight tab, you will see Hitlist as an option in the second row of options. The first detail you need to know is that every time you choose "Hitlist", even if you are currently on it, it refreshes the list of available hits.

When you attempt to perform a hit, it performs an attack on your victim, just like a Fight, but without the chance for a special loot drop. You still get the same money and XP. The important detail though is that you do damage to your opponent even if you lose the fight. All you need to do in order to collect the bounty is be the person who causes enough damage for your target to drop to 0 health. This means that regardless of your level, you can cash in on a hit placed on any target. Keep in mind though to be fully healed before you start, have enough stamina to try several times in a row, and have all your money in the bank so you don't lose money in failed attacks.

The highest amount a hit can be is currently $16,000,000. To get your bankroll started, keep refreshing the Hitlist tab until you find a target that has an $8,000,000 hit or larger placed on them. As soon as one comes up on the list, immediately attack them and keep clicking the Attack Again! button until you either succeed, run out of stamina, or someone else takes out your target. It can take a little patience to wait for a large enough hit to show up to be worth it, but it is worth the wait. If you don't succeed, just wait for your stamina to recover, heal up, bank your money and try again. On the flipside, since you will lose a lot and get injured frequently, it is completely worthless to do one of the $8,000 hits. Actually, the low value hits aren't worth it for anyone, but there are a lot of mediocre players out there. At the lowest levels, you will only be able to try a hit every 15 minutes, so we strongly recommend you never bother with any hit less than $8,000,000.

Balance the books

Once you get your immediate cash on hand fixed, you also need to make sure you keep your money situation solved. On the property tab you can see how much money you make an hour, how much your total expenses are an hour, and how much your cash on hand will net up each hour. It is strongly recommended no matter how badly you need an item, you don't let your expenses exceed 10% of your income. This guarantees that your properties will pay for themselves quickly enough to return most of that money to you in order to both get the items you need as well as more properties to raise your budget for expenses.

This is a good time to mention the Top Mafia bonuses to your income. It used to be you would get a 1% boost to your income for every member in your Top Mafia up to a maximum of 8%. This has changed when the Top Mafia was dropped to 6 members. Now, you get an 8% boost to your income if your Top Mafia is full with 6 members. You don't seem to get any bonus for less than that anymore. This means it should be an early priority to get at least 6 friends and at least one of each of the three character types as outlined in Getting Started.

Likewise, pay attention to your cash on hand. If you are getting beaten up frequently for your money, be sure you are banking it more regularly. Banked money can't be lost in fights, though is also can't be used for purchases. You will need to withdraw the money you need for property purchases and item purchases. If you do this while your health is less than 20, you can't be attacked for it before you make the purchase.

Finally, never heal your health unless you need to in order to leverage your stamina or you are about to do a boss fight. The lower your health, the less money you can lose to fights since other players can't attack you for money once your health drops below 20. On a similar note, when you do heal at the hospital, try to do it before you bank money. Hospital bills will pull from your bank account, but the money in your bank you paid a 10% laundering fee on, so effectively, that hospital bill is 10% more if you pay it from the bank rather than your cash on hand.

When to bank your cash flow… and when not

Next to your cash you have the option to go to the bank. To sum it up very simply, whenever you deposit money, 10% of the amount you deposit is deducted as a laundering fee. Withdrawing money has no penalties. You gain no interest on the money you have in the bank. Your money total shown in the stat bar is always just your cash on hand, so you must actually go to the bank to see how much money you have in the bank.

There used to be daily rewards, one of which was that the bank laundering fee was waived. The old way to get around laundering was to wait till these days and then deposit as much as you can. This feature has since been removed.

The Basics of Mafia Wars

Once you are finished with the little introduction sequence to the game, outlined thoroughly in Getting Started, it is not immediately apparent what you should do next. Overall, the game encompasses a number of different objectives and where to start is really up to you.

• Grow your Mafia family
• Keep leveling up your character
• Maximize your fighting strength
• Establish a large income
• Complete collections for special bonuses
• Earn impressive titles

Keepin' up with the Corleone's

Since Mafia Wars is a game on a social networking site, there is no surprise at all that it has a strong social networking component. Growing your mafia size has a surprising number of benefits:

• Ability to purchase more Mafia Mike's, the highest return on investment property
• Ability to purchase very strong special items
• Flushing out your Top Mafia for bonuses
• Your potential cash payout from jobs is increased.
• Certain mafia sizes are required to unlock Boss fights
• Higher attack and defense for both fighting others and defending yourself
• People to trade with to complete collections faster
• The chance to meet new people who share common interests!

Though you do not need the maximum 501 mafia size to be successful, it is highly recommended you try to keep your mafia size at least equal with your level. This will allow you to always get the most from your jobs, keep the boss fights unlocked, and have a solid chance at defending your properties from all the robberies going on out there. If you can't or are not interested in doing that, a mafia size of 16 will at least stop you from being unable to do the boss fights.

Doin' your first few 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. This is all detailed in Fightin' and Robbin'. 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.

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.

Pickin' a fight

At the very early levels, skill points won't have much to do with fighting at all and most everyone's skill points will have been spent in energy anyway. There are just a few key points to winning your fights in these low levels. First and foremost, make sure to the best of your financial ability that every member of your family has a weapon, armor, and vehicle. This means if your mafia size is 4, you ideally want 4 weapons with the highest attack value possible, 4 armors with the highest attack, and 4 vehicles with the highest attack. Whenever you are initiating combat, only the attack values matter. When you are assaulted by someone else, both attack and defense factor in.

The second key to winning your early combats is to just pick on the people with smaller families. If your mafia size is 7 and fully outfitted, you should win a fight against anyone with a family size of 6 or less. As you go up in levels this becomes less true and robbing takes on even different characteristics, but the details for these are in Fightin' and Robbin'. These basics tips are enough to get some money and XP out of your stamina.

More energy and Energy Paks

There are three ways to get more energy. It will regenerate at the rate of 1 every 5 minutes (3 minutes if you are a Maniac). It will completely refill whenever you gain a new level. This is one of the principal facts that makes speed leveling work, outlined in more detail in the Doin’ the Job section. You can also get a full refill from the Godfather. Finally there are Energy Paks and there can be a lot of confusion over how these work when you first start playing.

Energy Paks will completely refill your energy to your current maximum and give you an extra 25%. Your energy won’t refill again until your amount of current energy drops below your maximum. If you level before you use the extra 25% energy, you will lose the extra and be reset to your maximum amount. You want to save your Energy Pak until you have used all of your energy and you have the ability to consume most of the energy before leveling. On a similar note, you want to use the highest XP payout job if it is about to cause you to level as any excess XP beyond what is necessary to level will spill over in to starting the XP needed for the next level.

You can only use 1 Energy Pak every 24 hours. Before the Top Mafia was changed from 8 members to 6 members, sending out Energy Paks would only send them to people in your mafia who were also in your Top Mafia. Now they seem to go out to everyone in your Mafia. You won’t see them as being able to be used until the invisible timer of 24 hours since you used your last one completed.

Bein' a better slum lord

Properties make up the financial life blood of your borgata's empire. In order to make the most of your skim, you want to make sure you are buying the properties that produce the best return on investment (ROI) first. Your properties income will be added to your cash on hand every hour (54 minutes if you are a Mogul) even if you aren't logged in to the game. Some of the equipment you buy for your mafia, such as Chain Guns, Body Armor, and Towncars will also have an expense that is deducted from your profit every time it pays out. If this number ever goes negative, you lose money every hour, hence why smart investing is so important. A good rule of thumb is to not let your expenses (listed on the Properties tab) ever exceed 10% of your income. If buying a new item would push you over that amount, wait till you make your next property purchase.

Before we get too much further in to actual facts and figures, all advice on purchasing properties should be predicated with the following: Always buy a Mafia Mike's whenever it is available before doing anything else. No other property comes close to its profit potential, even if you have hundreds of them already.

The basics to maximizing the property racket comes down to this, each time you buy a given property, the cost for the next one goes up by 10% from the initial base price. So if a restaurant costs $30,000 for the first one, the second will cost $33,000 and the 11th will cost $60,000. The amount that each property pays per instance stays fixed. This means that the more of a given property you have, the lower the rate of return to keep buying that property.

The second key point is that if you buy more than one of a property at a time, the unit cost stays the same. So if you were to buy 5 Rent Houses each one at a time, you would pay, $10k, $11k, $12k, $13k, and $14k for a total of $60k. If you used to dropdown to choose to buy 5 Rent Houses all at once, you would have just paid $50k. This makes the amount of time to break even significantly reduced if you buy in bulk. The game only supports buying as many as 10 at a time, so practically speaking, this means you should always save up enough money to buy 10 of what you want and then buy the full block to get the best return.

To save up the money to get started and for information about how to protect your bankroll, you should read Rollin' a Bankroll. For more details on making the most of your properties and protecting yourself from robberies, see Property Moguls. For now, here is the list of initial purchases that will net you the best return on investment in order. Just save the specified amount of money, and get the next item on the list. You will notice, due to ROI, the Marina doesn't even show up in your first $10 million in purchases.

Qty	Property	Cost for 10
10	Abandoned Lot	$50,000
10	Rent House	$100,000
10	Abandoned Lot	$50,000
10	Italian Restaurant	$300,000
10	Abandoned Lot	$50,000
10	Commercial Block	$500,000
10	Apartment Complex	$2,000,000
10	Commercial Block	$500,000
10	Valu-Mart	$4,000,000
10	Rent House	$200,000
10	Abandoned Lot	$50,000
10	Italian Restaurant	$300,000
10	Abandoned Lot	$50,000

An offer you can’t refuse – Using the Godfather

The Godfather is the game's way of letting you spend reward points. You start the game with 10 and will get 1 more for every other level you obtain plus another 5 as a bonus after you start playing. Outside of that, reward points are gained by paying for them or completing offers with various advertisers that have signed up with Zynga. There is a strong temptation to use these points right away, but as they are your rarest commodity in the game, let us talk about what they can actually gain you.

So far, every couple of weeks there has been a special item that is available to purchase for 25 reward points, but the offer only lasts for 36 hours. There is no limit on the number that can be bought during that time, as long as you have the reward points for them. These items usually have stats that match or exceed the best items that can be gained from job loot or the mafia store. They are expensive, but definitely good deals if you plan on doing a lot of fighting.

Along the same lines, there are also offers of 1 for 20 or 3 for 55 special loot items. Previously these were called Tools of the Trade, Yakuza Crates and Red Hammer Crates, but now they are Woodsman Crates. The boxes have a 10% chance at a rare item and a 30% chance for an uncommon. The uncommon items are about the equivalent of the special offers and the special loot rewards for mafia size. The rare items are slightly better than the best loot items in the game for a given stat. Unfortunately, with the low drop chance of the rare items and the fact that the common items don't match up to the best job loot, we don't really recommend picking these up.

The Godfather also has the option to completely refill your energy, stamina, or health. Health is a horrible deal as you can always pay the hospital to heal you every 45 seconds and this site has ample information to solving money problems. Stamina refills may seem useful to fulfill a vendetta on someone you are warring with, but once again, your stamina regenerates naturally and if you just hit the mattresses until you have it all back, you get the exact same effect. Energy refills may occasionally be worthwhile if you are trying to speed level, especially as your available energy pool exceeds 24 hours to naturally replenish. Of course, your daily Energy Paks also solve this issue.

Buying a name change is certainly worthwhile if you decide you don't like your initial choice. Unfortunately, there is no longer a way to change your initial choice of character type. Hopefully they will either fix that in the future, or balance the character types better. Buying extra skills points is certainly a viable option if you wish. Buying money is a complete waste as there are many easy ways within the game to solve your financial woes. Check out the Rollin' a Bankroll section if you are still struggling.

Getting Started on Mafia Wars

Welcome to the gang ridden world of Mafia Wars. If you are already playing the game and just looking for specific tips, browse the list of articles in the guide on the left to find the information you are looking for. For the rest of you, you probably have gotten a request to play from one of your friends, followed by e-mails, phone calls, text messages, and a horse head in your bed till you finally agreed to play. Here you should find all the basics you need to get started and get your own personal Family going.

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.