This is not really an in-depth strategy guide to Mafia Wars. This is basically a short list of things that I do to level up quickly, compared to many other players. Much of it is common sense. I play Mafia Wars on Facebook, so, if you play it on another site and things are set up different, some of my strategies might not work there.
Keep a zero Cash Balance
Before going into fights, always be sure to deposit all of your cash into the bank. Other players can attack you at any time, so it is a good idea to keep a zero cash balance most of the time and especially before signing off. If you don’t, other players will fight and rob you. Depositing money does incur a 10% laundering fee but is very little in the scheme of things.
Fight Often
Before going into fights, research your opponent before pressing the attack button. Just do a quick run through to see how powerful the player is.
First, look at the size of the player’s mafia. I always tried to attack players with nearly the same size or smaller mafia as I have because more members means more weapons that will be used against you.
Second, look at the number of jobs, which will give you a sense of the player’s experience and how his profile points are distributed – the higher the number, the higher the probability that their attack and defense is strong. I usually attack players with about the same amount of jobs completed or lower.
Third, look at the number of wins and losses that your prospective opponents have. A higher loss to win ratio offers you a better chance of defeating them.
Forth, quickly browse through the player’s weapons arsenal. If you see that they have much stronger weapons than you or a large quantity of stronger weapons, it is best not to attack them.
Fifth, look at the player’s properties to get an idea of how much money they possess and how much they can be robbed. Gaining money from attacks is good but not always necessary. Winning attacks earns you experience points at a fairly steady pace without wasting any energy. Often times, I will earn a few hundred thousand dollars off of an opponent and then keep earning experience points after they are broke.
Once you find a good candidate to attack, test them out with an attack. If you lose the first fight, move on to another player to attack. If you win the first attack, take advantage of it and repeatedly attacked them until you are out of stamina or you lose a fight. It’s unrealistic but, mafia wars lets me win repeated attacks on a player and then suddenly gives me a loss; I haven’t figured out why.
If you keep winning attacks against a player and you run out of health points, keep the attack window open until you earn more health points. I usually open a new window or tab to the game where I can restore my health and deposit money or do jobs without interfering with the player that I want to keep attacking. Once you earn enough stamina or restore your health, go back to attacking the player until you lose. One other thing I learned about the health points is that you can pay the doctor to restore your health with the money that is in your bank account, so there’s no need to keep money at all in the cash box.
Create an attack list of those members that you have attacked and beaten. This way you can go back and attack them again in the future, knowing that they are probably beatable again to you. Using Mafia wars, you can’t just keep track of them or look them up later, at least not to my knowledge. Instead, right click on the name of the member and copy the link location. When you’re ready to attack again, simply paste the link location to the member’s profile into the navigation bar of your browser.
One warning, though, is that there’s always the chance of the members, we have attacked repeatedly, will seek revenge at some point. Either they will grow stronger and attack you later or they can put a hit out on you using the hit list and get other stronger members to take you out. You need to weigh the factors involved and, whatever you do, try not to get a really, really stronger member mad at you!
Use Your Profile Points as Soon as Possible
As soon as you master a job or level up and earn profile points, use them to increase your strength of attack and defense, which will help you immediately in fights. The more fights you win, the faster you will earn experience points and level up. Round and round it goes like a circle. Sometimes I level up so fast, I feel like I am flying!
Properties
In the first 10 or so levels, don’t think too big with properties. You should focus on Mafia Mike’s, Rent Houses, and Italian Restaurants. Mafia Mike’s should be your focus in the beginning because they earn the most at a relatively low price. Note that Mafia Mike’s requires a certain number of mafia members to buy more than one. After the first one, each consecutive one requires two more members. I have 24 members and 9 Mafia Mike’s, so it earns me $108,000 each hour.
Once you get past level 10 and earning a few hundred thousand dollars an hour, then you can start buying bigger properties, such as the Apartment Complex and Valu-Mart.
When you start earning close to $1 million an hour, then you can start taking on the bigger properties, such as the Marina Tourist Shops.
Finally, when you start earning over $1 million an hour, that you can start saving up for the biggest properties, such as the Office Building, 5-Star Hotel, and Mega Casino.
One piece of advice, if you want to save money buying properties, is that if you buy them in quantity, each property will be the same price. If you buy one at a time, the price will incrementally increase.
One concern to think about is that your properties will be attacked, so you will need to buy protection. If it is attacked and the health goes down below 100%, it will start earning less and less money each hour. I try to keep all my property at 120% health. In the game’s latest update, the exact level of protection can no longer be seen; you can only see the shields and whether or not your properties are at 100% or lower. I am not sure if this feature will be changed back to the way it was but, I preferred it the way it was previously.
Energy Paks
When a member of your mafia sends you an energy pak, do not immediately use it. Look at your current energy level to see where it is at at the moment. If it is low, like around 10 or less, you should use the energy pak right away before your energy refills again. If your energy level is high, like above 10, 20 or higher, do a few jobs to use up your energy until it is below 10 or less, before using the energy pak. Why do this? Simple. As soon as you use an energy pak, your energy will be boosted to its maximum +25%, no matter the energy level before using it. By using up your current energy and then using your energy pak, you will get twice as many jobs done. If your current energy level is, say 50, and you use an energy pak, that is 50 points wasted.
Be courteous with your energy paks. When a member sends you an energy pak, you should use it and then send everyone an energy pak. Even if no one sent you an energy pak, you should send them to your members and some of them may send you an energy pak back in return.
Leveling Up
Leveling up is always fun because it brings you full health, energy, stamina and profile points but, you should use careful planning before leveling up. Always keep note of how close you are to leveling up. Once you get within, like 50 experience points away from leveling up, you should use strategy to reap the most benefits of the next level. As soon as you level up, all of your attribute levels will be replenished, so it is a good idea to get your attribute levels, especially the energy, as low as possible before leveling up because, by using them up first, you are, in essence, getting twice as much done due to the fact that the levels will be replenished as soon as you level up.
If you have a lot of energy left before leveling up, take a few big jobs with a lot of experience points because they will use your energy quickly while bringing you a lot of experience points. Watch how close you are to leveling up, so that you don’t use a small amount of energy to bring you a little amount of experience points but enough to level up. You do not want to level up with a job that only earns you enough experience points to level up, while leaving you with a lot of energy that is wasted because your energy will only be refilled enough to fill it to the maximum.
If you have a little amount of energy left and are very close to leveling up, you can always attack other members to nudge you to the next level to replenish everything.
Before leveling up, I try to get as many jobs and fights done as possible. This way, I use up all of the health, energy and stamina that I have and then level up to do it all over again. It is like getting twice as much done.
Getting Attacked
Other members can attack you even when you are not logged in to the game. This is to be expected. But, for revenge or another reason, some members will target you because they see you as weaker or richer. This is not usually a problem when the other member is almost even with use strength-wise. It becomes a major problem when the other member, while being at nearly the same level, has more money, weapons or a lot of strong members in their mafia. They can attack you at will, as much as they want.
I had one such member attack me last week. He robbed my properties dozens and dozens of times. I lost about $60 million preparing and protecting my casinos because he kept attacking and attacking.
What can you do when a member keeps attacking and robbing you? You can wait for them to get bored with you or you can be pro-active. There are two ways that I found to combat the situation. The first is to add the member to the hit list with a sizable bounty and hope that a really stronger member attacks your enemy. However, if this does not work and you keep getting attacked, the last resort is to sell off your properties, especially the big ones, and wait a few days for your enemy to get bored with you and move on. You can always buy your properties again; it is just a minor setback.
When you get stronger and gain more members, you can always go back and enact revenge on the person that repeatedly attacked you. Copy and save the link location to this member for future use. At least, that is what I would do but, I am a very vengeful person! Muhaha!
Add Members to Your Mafia
In the beginning, you can invite your friends to be members in your mafia. A small handful will join your mafia but that is not enough. You need a large mafia if you expect to be in any condition to attack larger mafias later on in the game. So, you need to look elsewhere for members, especially strong members because they will help you a lot in fights.
You can find members on countless groups, on and off of Facebook, dedicated to mafia wars. I know what you’re thinking, that you do not want strangers to be on your friends list. This is a legitimate concern but, one trick is that, once they become your friend and join your mafia, you can delete them from your friends list. They will remain a member of your mafia, regardless of their being on your friends list.
When I went to invite a lot of members to my mafia, I posted a comment on the front page of each group. I asked for people to join my mafia and a lot of them did. The comments will accumulate fast on each group and your comment will be quickly pushed to another page, where it will not be seen as much, so you want to post a comment occasionally for new members to see and join your mafia. Do not overdo it or you will be labeled a troll or spammer and most likely booted from the group. You can also add members, who are requesting mafia members, to your friends list.
Once they are on your friends list or you are on their list, either one of you can send an invite to the other to join each other’s mafia. If either of you run out of invites for the day, keep them as friends and invite them another day.
After they are on your mafia list, you can delete them as a friend. One complication with this is keeping track of who is friend and who is just there for the game. What I did was label purely mafia people as mafia and then, after adding them to my friends list and mafia, I could open up the friends list to the label for mafia members and quickly delete them. If you are planning on adding a lot of real friends to your friends list, it’s probably best to hold off on mass inviting purely mafia members to your friends list for a few days or everyone will get mixed together quickly and it will take a lot of work to delete those people that are not your friends.
Reference:
- Mafia Wars on Facebook: www.facebook.com/applications/#/apps/application.php?id=10979261223&b;&ref;=pd_r
