Tips and Tricks concerning Mafia Wars.12

Lately there was no new posts with tips and tricks concerning our favorite game, since I couldn't imagine of anything new to write. Nevertheless, from time time, bug fixes or addition of new code make new issues to arise.

One of the latest game features, which has been updated recently is the Daily Take. This is a daily gift that varies from consumables and boosts to loot items and skill points. During the first four days it includes nothing important for most players, although the last three days skill points are offered.

The reason of this post is to tell you of something I discovered, while accepting the maximum number of daily takes (5) from friends daily, during the last months. There were times that I couldn't understand, after accepting five daily takes, why I had to wait 24 hours in order to accept a new one. So, there were days I was accepting 2 for example, in less than 24 hours I accepted 3 more and then I had to wait 24-26 more hours in order to get a new one. The daily take timer resets daily at 02:00 am locally. If you don't accept a daily take between 00:00 to 02:00 am then the daily take counter resets and you are able to get five new daily takes, expecting to see the collect button available under a skill point!

The easiest way to search for daily takes published by your friends is the Stream Scanner bookmarklet created by Team Spockholm. After you run the script setting a certain time frame (the number of hours to scan your wall feeds) you are presented with the following screen.

Click the yellow button titled Click Links and wait for a while, depending on the number of posts, in order to see the gifts still available from your friends' daily takes. Click the Log tab.

I was quite lucky this time. I clicked the link Health Points (x3) and I was rewarded with 3 health points.

If you have any ideas or discovered something while playing Mafia Wars and you wish to share it with other players, do not hesitate to contact us. Our blog's Facebook page is open to all.

PS. As always, if you'd like to see the series of the Tips and Tricks posts, just click this link.

Tips and Tricks concerning Mafia Wars.11

It's been a while since my last post... almost a month. During this time we finally moved to a new year -a really difficult one- and Zynga still keeps making the life of old (and new) MW players more difficult than it is. We should all consider renaming our favorite game into MafiaVille, the place where all Dons are dealing with constructions.

One of the latest features added to the game are the family properties. These are buildings that all family members should assist in upgrading.

The first property is here and it is called Artillery Station. In order to upgrade it, collecting a consumable named Artillery Shell is needed.

Today's tip concerns a small bonus added on the health of this property. Artillery station, like all our properties, could be: upgraded, destroyed and offers us a bonus. It can be destroyed (health lowered to 0) when people from other families attack it (the same as the robberies we all are aware already). So as to make it more difficult for another family to attack our property and reduce its health, we should all add five items to raise its defense. Note: You should be aware of losing from your inventory any item added to the family properties' defense.

So, when this feature was introduced I added five lodjurs to its defense. The total health bonus was 965 points (193x5). A few days ago I ran an inventory scan and I found out that I was having more unused items that might add a few more points to the health bonus of the artillery station. The trick is to add an item from all five available categories: a weapon, an armor, a vehicle, an animal and a henchman. As you see from the previous image, the five items selected add to 1014 points but thanks to an extra bonus of 100 points (since these all are from different categories) the health bonus offered to the family property is now 1114 points.

We expect soon a new family property to be introduced: the Bunker. This building probably will offer us extra defense points to our total stats and in order to upgrade it, we'll need a new consumable named Reinforced concrete.

PS. As always, if you'd like to see the series of the Tips and Tricks posts, just click this link.

Tips and Tricks concerning Mafia Wars.10

In the latest episodes of our game a new city was presented (Chicago) and a couple of secret districts: Snake Island and Lexington Hotel. For some of us who don't currently have tons of energy, we may still try to complete them. There are various strategies we may follow in order to complete cities' jobs easier, use less consumables in jobs (when needed) and these are the ones we are going to see right now.

In the secret district of Brazil named Snake Island 240 consumables (Antivenoms) were needed to complete it until Ruby level. For Lexington Hotel, the secret district of Chicago, 204 consumables (Lexington Room Keys) are also needed. What would you reply if I tell you that only 97 Antivenoms were needed for me and 81 Lexington Room Keys in order to finish both secret districts? This was achieved easily by the combination of two things: using the assistants from city crew and 2x Mastery Boosts.

In the cities of Brazil and Chicago there are two assistants helping us in jobs: Strategist and Lockpick.

The Lockpick when active enables us to receive double loot for the next 20 jobs. So, if we use it in the job (or jobs), which offers a certain consumable, we may assume that we'll gain more of them. The best strategy is not advancing to the next level of a district, unless we've acquired enough consumables.

There is no hurry anyway. We may finish this job and repeat it a few more times when the same assistant from city crew becomes active again.

The Strategist when active enables us to achieve double mastery for the next 20 jobs. So, if we use it in the job (or jobs), which requires a certain consumable, we may assume that we are going to use less (approximately 50%) consumables. What if we have enough 2x mastery boosts already in our inventory? After zynga-math using the strategist and 2x mastery boosts we achieve a 3x job mastery with every click, which helps us using 60% less consumables.

Note: 2x mastery boosts can not be used in a district's ruby level (only during the three first levels).

Since last June I am not able to send 2x mastery boosts to my MW friends. Every time the Send button appears, I am presented with a black screen without any further possibilities... no friends' list to choose from. After having contacted customer support various times, the latest answer that I've got was that this feature will be removed from the game soon. So, my advice is to start, even today, collecting as many 2x mastery boosts as possible.

There are four different ways to collect 2x mastery boosts.

1. Start checking your team mates' links, since 2x mastery boosts links are one of the few, which are still working. If you want to see an image in your game like the previous one when clicking a link, make sure you are in NY or Italy before clicking it; anyway, you do receive the 2x mastery boost even if you currently are in one of the others cities. With this way you may collect up to five 2x mastery boosts daily. 
2. In your Daily Take (or the ones from your team mates) ten 2x mastery boosts are offered sometimes.
3. Mastery boosts are offered through the free gift Mystery Boost; the number of boosts you may receive varies.
4. Apart from these, you may create your own links, which may add nine more 2x mastery boosts to your inventory daily. You can do this with MW Addon or even manually. Credits go once more to King Brewok, an MWM family member. Ten months ago the manual method was presented to this blog. Just follow the procedure presented from step 5.

That's all for today my friends. I hope something useful was also presented today. See you all again soon.

Tips and Tricks concerning Mafia Wars.09

As we all know the Family XP Progress has four parts. Today we'll try to show you how to complete the fourth one, which is called Helper. Even if it seems simple enough, there are still too many people who can't complete it and are in no position to offer 600 XP to the daily family progress. For this objective, we get points when opening gifts, offer job help to our friends, activate crew members in Brazil and/or Chicago, participating in operations and in wars etc.

This is the explanation we see from inside the game if we click the My Family tab. We may forget about the crime sprees, since this was an older feature and it is now removed.

All these actions may be divided in two categories: the permanent/daily actions and the mission specific ones.




Mission specific actions
Every two weeks we have a new mission to complete. Each time we accept a mission crew request from our friends we earn 2 points for the helper part of the family mission. Every time we respond to a post made from our team mates requesting consumables for the mission, we also get 2 points.

Permanent/daily actions
As you may see from the previous image, each time we add a new friend to the game we earn 10 points, which is the top action for the family mission. Even if this is the case, the easiest way to earn more than 50% of the XP needed for the helper part of the family mission is spinning our friends' Vegas slots. By doing this to 20 team mates' slot machines we gain 60 points and this can be easily done daily. Just in case you may think that this takes too much time, there are third party tools, which can help you complete it without "pain". Pistol Pete from the Spockholm Team has created the Loose slots script that may help you complete this part in less than 5 minutes. The script can be found here. Jen from MWLL blog has written detailed instructions on how to use this script over one year ago. The instructions can be found here.

So, what else should we do in order to earn the rest of the points and complete the helper part of the family mission? Here is an example:

- Declare 2 wars daily and participate in 2 more: 10 points.
- Answer your friends' requests for job help.
- Open gifts; let's say 10 gifts: 10 points - if you open more gifts you get more points.
- Activate your crew members in Brazil and Chicago. Let's say that you don't activate all spots, but only 5 in each city: 5 + 5 twice a day = 20 points.
- Participate in operations.

I believe that after all these options, which are provided to us daily, finishing this task won't be a problem any more.

Tips and Tricks concerning Mafia Wars.08

Hi all! As written in the previous blog post from today we'll start dealing with easy ways to complete the objectives of the family mission.

The Family XP Progress has four parts. Today we'll try to show you how to complete the third one, which is called Property. Even if it seems simple enough, there are still too many people who can't complete it and are in no position to offer 600 XP to the daily family progress.

For this objective, we get points when crafting items in the NY properties. The maximum amount of points we may (or better we should) get are 60. The points we earn are equal to the levels of the buildings we have chosen to craft an item. So far there are 11 buildings in NY offering various loot items and skill points associated with them.

As said before points = sum of the levels of the buildings we craft items. The only way I see that is possible to make things more clear is through images. So, take a look at the following pictures/cases. 

 

Case 1: We have chosen to craft items from four new buildings (Tad's Gun Shop, Biker Clubhouse, Martial Arts Dojo, Cemetery) and from one old one (Chop Shop). If we add the levels of the five buildings, the sum is 55. This selection won't allow us to get the maximum number of points for the family mission, so it is not a desirable one. 

  

Case 2: We have chosen to craft items from five new buildings (Sports Bar, Venetian Condo, Tad's Gun Shop, Biker Clubhouse, Martial Arts Dojo). If we add the levels of the five buildings, the sum is 50. This selection won't allow us to get the maximum number of points for the family mission, so it is not a desirable one as well. 

 

Case 3: We have chosen to craft items from three old buildings and from two new ones (if you take a closer look the Cider House is not fully upgraded). If we add the levels of the five buildings, the sum is 62. This selection offers the maximum amount of points for the family mission, so it is a good one.

  

Case 4: We have chosen to craft items from three old buildings and from two new ones. If we add the levels of the five buildings, the sum is 65. This selection offers the maximum amount of points for the family mission, so it is a good one as well.

With these four examples we distinguished various cases of NY properties' selections. In two of them we couldn't offer to the daily family progress the maximum XP, while in the other two we did. There is no rule for choosing a certain building and saying that this one is better than another one. The only fact is that crafting items in the four old NY buildings (Chop shop, Weapons Depot, Armory, Private Zoo) we get the 60 points needed, as far as all four are fully upgraded. So, before crafting an item add the levels of all the buildings and make sure that the sum is over 60. That's all for today. See you again really soon.

Tips and Tricks concerning Mafia Wars.07

Hi all! I believe that by now most of you, you have already joined a family. And you did pretty well since being a member of a family has many advantages ... and only one disadvantage from what I have seen.

1. The most important of all I believe, when you become a member of an MW family, is the fact of 'facing' everything together, either good or bad. A game problem of a clan member becomes immediately a problem of all; the opposite is true as well. At least this is happening in MW families with 'tight bonds'.

2. The second most important is the perks; playing all together in order to gain certain bonuses. As Zynga stated in its blog last week, we should be expecting new levels of family progression this week.





3. Boss fights is one more new feature available to your account, only when you are member of a family. Once again, playing all together and spending your stamina or consumables -gained through the game or offered as free gifts- the possibility is offered to be rewarded with four good loot items with stats over 100.

And this is not all. When you belong to a family you have the possibility to join another member's war, city crew (Brazil or Chicago) or click to his level-up bonus without even being FB friends with this person.

But being a member of a family is not only the right to earn a reward but it is as well the responsibility to let the rest of the family members to gain the same reward. This is succeeded through the Family mission and completing daily the four stages of the family XP progress. This might seem a bit difficult but truly isn't. In our next blog post we'll deal with easy ways to complete at least two out of four daily tasks: helper and property.

Being a member of a family in Mafia Wars nowadays is a must. Don't skip the chance to gain all the rewards we have mentioned before. The only disadvantage of this -as far as I have noticed- is keeping 'friendships' created before the appearance of this feature; your old MW team mates may still belong to your mafia but ...

So, you should still keep doing jobs, crafting items in NY, helping other players and certainly icing opponents!

Tips and Tricks concerning Mafia Wars.06

Hi all! Since the moment I started playing Mafia Wars there was a 'constant battle' between players on the subject: what is better, raising total stats or personal skills and which is the equation between total stats and personal ones?

There is no de facto answer to these two questions but a few things may be considered as facts. First, every few months most loot items become obsolete; one year ago we were looking for Bangkok HEL and now we are searching for items double as powerful as those. Second, skill points are never lost; the most you get the better your account becomes.

So, you may consider this post as a quick reminder of where to get skill points.

1. We get 5 skill points every time we level up.
2. Also, when we level up we get a bonus promotion: 1-3 attack points, 1-3 defense points amongst others. This bonus may be shared with 3 of our friends, which means that we may get more skill points from our team mates (if they share it with us).
3. We get quite a few skill points by crafting items in 5 NY buildings and the port in Italy.
4. 1 skill point is offered to us daily through the Mafia Wars Facebook fanpage.
5. We get 1 skill point by opening Blue Mystery Bags (we may also get a stamina boost, a wishlist item, 1 free RP, 1 lotto ticket, etc.).
6. We get 1 attack point and/or 1 defense point by opening Red Mystery Bags (we may also get an energy boost, etc.).
7. We may get 1 attack point and 1 defense point by opening a secret drop.
8. We may get 1 defense point through mystery bonus; a mystery bonus may be found and sent as free gift when completing an operation.
9. Additional skill points may be found through the daily take (1 energy, 1 stamina, 1 attack, 1 defense or 3 health points); apart from our daily take, we can accept 5 more from our team mates.
10. Skill points are also sold in the marketplace or offered through marketplace items.

From time to time new free gifts may offer skill points, like the gold mystery bag.
Update: it is as if I was in Zynga's mind. Gold mystery bags just appeared once more. Apart from the cannister rifles (a weapon with decent stats) we may receive by opening gold mystery bags: 5 energy points and 5 attack points.

That's all for now. I know that I haven't answered to any of the questions in the beginning of this message but this was not the purpose of this post.

Tips and Tricks concerning Mafia Wars.05

Hi all! Today we'll talk about the Mafia Wars links and how they can be created.

I believe that you all know so far what is a web address, also known as URL. Since you are reading this then you have already clicked the url: http://mafia-wars-maniac.blogspot.com/ . They may appear as plain addresses starting from 'http' or as highlighted (sometimes underlined too) text, known as hyperlinks or links. A very well known link is Facebook.

In order to make a link for your favorite game the instructions are very simple. Let's see what is a Mafia Wars gift link.
From the Facebook main screen, select Game Requests. Let's click the first Accept button on the right of this image.




Instantly a new page is loaded in your browser showing the gift you have received from your friend. Take a look at the url (marked in a gray frame).






This is the link.

The true link is following the form: http://apps.facebook.com/inthemafia/track.php?uid=0&zy_track=request&code&value={"from" "p| but since most companies nowadays prefer the urls to be encoded, we currently see this one: http://apps.facebook.com/inthemafia/index.php?next_params= and after that, hundreds of characters that mean nothing (because of the url encoding).

So, if you click the web address, select all the text (press the keys Ctrl+A) and copy it (press the keys Ctrl+C) and send it to your friend, from whom you have received the gift, this is his/her gift link (a Blue Mystery Bag in our example).

This is useful in missions and especially when we are asked for mission crew. We may send a request to a friend who is online and ask from him/her to return back the link. All he/she has to do is open the request from Facebook Game requests page, click the Accept button, copy the url and send it back to us. Then, if we post it to our wall, every friend of ours who clicks the link, will allow us to get more mission crew.

The only 'problem' with this procedure is that our link is quite large because of the encoding. For that reason many url-shortening services exist and most of them are free. One of these is TinyURL. Let's visit its webpage.

First we copy the Mafia Wars gift link (the large url) by clicking the web address bar of our browser, selecting all the text and copying it.

Then we paste this text in the TinyURL page, where the red line is. If we wish our final link to be custom made, e.g. being something like: http://tinyurl.com/mylink, then we write the text mylink, where the green line is. If this is of no importance, then we leave this field blank. Our final step is to click the Make TinyURL! button and we are done.

The small web address over the red line is our gift link.

So, if crew is needed for a mission, we may send a request to a friend of ours, ask him/her to return the link back to us and finally, all we have to do is post it to our wall and expect from our team mates to click it!

Tips and Tricks concerning Mafia Wars.04

Hi all. After the latest changes Zynga made to the game, one of the best features it currently has is the possibility to use an energy pack or a stamina pack (power pack) every 8 hours, which offers us 125% of energy or stamina (125% of the features’s current level).

Since power packs are offered through free gifts, I won’t mention them in this article any further. If you are like me and you wish having the energy pack meter always full, I think that this post may help you to achieve it and also keep five or more crime sprees handy, whenever you need them.

The reason for this is the fact that energy packs' and crime sprees' links have never changed. They remain the same, no matter when you -or your team mates- have created them, so they last forever (as long as the developers don’t change the coding again).

In Mafia Wars we all are used to “beg” continuously, a common procedure for all social games. We make posts asking for building parts, crew, special parts, boss fights' consumables, participation in wars and operations, etc. So, if we can omit one type of messages, I guess that it’ll “make our experience better” … something from Zynga’s moto.

The first step we have to follow is to start searching for energy packs’ and crime sprees’ links. Thanks to our team mates and Spockholm Tools Link-a-Nator, there are so many posted daily on our Facebook wall.

OK now, we’ve used them, we’ve got the meter filled-up again, we’ve got the extra energy and/or stamina thanks to the crime sprees. And now what? What should we do in 8 hours again (for an energy pack) or in 24 hours (for the 5 crime sprees).

The second step is to save these links somewhere to be easily accessible in order to use them again after 24 hours –energy packs’ links may be used again, if 24 hours have passed since the moment we clicked them.

We may use a Microsoft Word document to save them or a plain text file … or even better use a Facebook feature named Notes, which allows all links to be clickable (no reason to copy-paste them on the address bar, just click them). So, in order to create our first note, there are a few steps to follow.

1. At the left of the Facebook screen, under the section APPS there is an application named Notes. Click it.







2. The notes submenu appears. Click on My Notes.









3. All the notes you've written so far are here. Click the button + Write a Note.

The notes' interface is quite simple as of any text editor. After you paste all your links here do not forget to ...

... make this document accessible (viewable) only by yourselves -unless of course you don't mind sharing it with your team mates. In order to do this, click on the privacy section of the notes interface.

Click on Friends, select Custom and then ...






... Only me. Click the Save changes button for your changes to take effect. After you think that you are done, click the Publish button.

The note you have created is always, easily, accessible through the main Facebook screen. Just click Notes, My Notes and ... you are done.

Addendum: A friend had commented on this post saying that the links are not active (clickable). He/She is absolutely right and the solution exists in my comment. All we have to do is using the html tag.

PS. In all these posts I've been using the word links all the time. But do we really know what the links are and how to create them, alone or with the assistance of a team mate? This is going to be the subject of our next post.

Tips and Tricks concerning Mafia Wars.03

Hi all. Normally today, I wasn't going to write something but a family member received the following message a while ago:

Facebooƙ Seȼurity
LAST WARNING : Your account is reported to have violated the policies that are considered annoying or insulting Facebook users.

Until we (http://www.facebook.com/security) system will disable your account within 24 hours if you do not do the reconfirmation. If you still want to use Facebook, Please confirm your account below: apps-customer-help-support.tk/

Thanks. The Facebook Team

During this year too many attempts have been made with a sole purpose only: steal Facebook accounts. The best thing to do first, when you receive a "warning" info, is not to believe everything that reaches your mailbox. The easiest way to understand if the incoming message is a hoax or not is by the message itself. If the message reached your normal mailbox (email) then this makes it more official; if it is a Facebook message or just a chat communication, then definitely it is a hacking attempt.

NOTE: if you receive a warning by chat, DO NOT click the link provided.

The formal Facebook pages exist in URL addresses like: www.facebook.com/

In the case the address provided has the form: apps.facebook.com then you should immediately understand that this is an application and you shouldn't continue.

A few actions you should take to protect your account are the following:
1. Hide your email address from your account; that way you wouldn't be contacted by the probable virus-worm-account stealer.
2. Keep different passwords for your email address (connected to Facebook) and your Facebook account; even if you lose your account with your email you'll able to re-gain it in no time.
3. Hide your full date of birth from your Facebook profile page; this information is crucial and it is needed in case you want to reclaim your account.

That's all for today. With these three easy steps you'll keep enjoying your Facebook games for a long time :-) .

PS. This last "warning" message reached my team mate from .tk, which stands for Tokelau: a couple of coral atolls in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Ah, I just wish I was there ...

Tips and Tricks concerning Mafia Wars.02

Hi all. Today's tip has been discussed many times in the past and has already been posted in the {ṀωṀ} family page, although I still see many team mates "troubled" when trying to offer a gold mastery bonus.

You may have already noticed while leveling up, that the best items (3 attack points, 3 defense points, 5 building parts, etc.) are found when your new level is something like XXX0 or YYY5; this is what is called a Gold Mastery Bonus. You may have also noticed that you can not post this on your wall but specifically you have to post it to the wall of three team mates of yours. The problem is when these friends are inactive or have never played Mafia Wars before; the game allows you to post this bonus only on the walls of such friends of yours.

In order to some friends of yours (up to 3) get this bonus, the solution is easy. All you have to do is informing them to click a previous post of yours, when you leveled up before or provide the link of a previous level-up mastery bonus.

And keep in mind that it is not necessary to be FB friends with this person for as long as you are members of the same family to get the mastery bonus :-) .

Tips and Tricks concerning Mafia Wars.01

Hi all! Tips and Tricks concerning Mafia Wars will be a new column in the Mafia Wars Maniac blog. You may consider it as a small guide, where I will be trying presenting a few ideas and tips concerning the game ... our game ... sometimes already published, sometimes plain "fresh". This text will be updated continuously, but not daily, with everything new found. So, I hope that you like this effort and I'll be expecting your comments and questions, which are going to be most than welcome ... always!

Operations, Wars and more

While doing jobs, fights or robbing you may get the chance for a new operation to appear. Take a look at the following image:

At that moment you may don't want to start it immediately. What would you do?

Just press the game banner, found on the top left of the game screen, in order to refresh it. That way the operation exists in your operation inventory but it is saying: You haven't started this operation yet!, which means that time hasn't started counting yet.

You may wish to do something else. You may want particular friends to join this operation and you do not want everyone to participate. With the launch of the new operations' and wars' system, there is no secret or hidden post any more.

When you press the blue button (Publish), even if you have decided this post to be visible only to you, all your Top Mafia members already know that you just made a post ... and sometimes even people not in your mafia know about this. So, do not be surprised when you make a post of an operation, as hidden, and you see people unknown participating.

What you'd rather do? Check the blue title (the one with the red border in the image). This is the link. Right-click it, select Copy and send it in a private message to your friends. And do NOT press the Publish button. Press Cancel. If something goes wrong, then in 30 minutes you have the chance to post this operation once more.

PS. Everything written is applied to Wars as well.