Newbie Education Project for Mafia Wars

While I am learning more about Rackets I thought I would pass along some advice for new Mafia Wars players. With the popularity of the game it is inevitable that there will be literally thousands of players joining us each and every day and it is up to us to teach them the “ropes” so to speak.

If you decide to start an organized clan, teach the new members good “netiquette” early on and you will be much better off. Oh, you don’t know what a clan is? That’s easy; a clan is a group of players who have organized under one name. You have seen them and maybe not even noticed or understood.

Take a look at the fight section of the game and you will see some players have initials in brackets before their name. This is their clan affiliation. Tomorrow I will give you a list of the clans that I know of so you can better understand what the numbers, letters, and symbols mean.

Here are a few things that you can teach your players to do and not to do in order to be a better social network citizen.

1.) Gifting

Gifting is wonderful and everyone should participate if they can. The annoying part comes when a player publishes every gift that they give. It is much better just to gift and skip the publishing.

2.) Lotto

We all play the lotto with most of hoping for one of the super rare items from the Daily Chance Collection. Believe me they are rare, I have almost 30 accounts and have yet to get even one piece and I play every day.

Teach your young players not to publish their lotto numbers. No one cares what their numbers were and it just clutters up everyone’s wall.

3.) Hitlisting

If you have been put on the hitlist there is a reason for it, most likely because you have been a pain in the ass to someone else. Remember that the person who claimed your bounty is just a person doing a job so don’t hitlist them. If you must hitlist someone then hitlist the person who paid the bounty in the first place, they are the one that caused you to be attacked.

4.) Wishlist

There is nothing wrong with posting your wishlist to your wall however doing it 20 times per day is annoying. Also, you should try to get all the collections items before going for the big stuff.

5.) Multiple Attacks

Attacking another player is part of the game but you should not get your jollies by attacking the same player repeatedly. Yes you know you can beat them at present but would you like someone doing that to you? Show a little class by and hit them a couple of time and move on to another target.

This advice does not apply to those on the hitlist since the object is to kill the character and collect a bounty. Hit these people as hard and as fast as you can.

6.) Complaining

Say you get attacked from the fight list 10 times in a row from the same person, get used to it and don’t whine about it. Yes, the person that attacked you is doing exactly what I told you not to do, but ultimately attacks are part of the game and you have to deal with it.

7.) Job Bonuses

ALWAYS post your job bonuses to the wall so others can help you and earn some experience and some cash along the way.

8.) Achievements

Only post important achievements on your wall.

These tidbits of advice will go a very long way to ensuring that you are looked upon as a considerate and thoughtful player not only in Mafia Wars but in all of the social network games that you play not to mention the networks themselves.

Racketeering in Mafia Wars

My apologies for the lack of posts over the last week or so, but I have been trying to develop a solid understanding of the new Racketeering feature that Zynga is now testing in Mafia Wars.

Rackets are a feature that Zynga is testing and it is not available to everyone as yet. It seems that all new accounts have access to this feature as well as some current accounts. Personally I have over a dozen active accounts and none of them have access to Rackets.

In order to test out Rackets I started a new account. With this account I am not going for super fast leveling, eventually it will become an account that I use to work the hitlist for experience and profit, but in the mean time I will use it to get a firm grip on the concept of Rackets and take you along for the ride. As I learn new things I will post them here so we can all learn together.

Along with the Rackets feature you will notice that you have a new pool called Influence. The points in this pool are used with the Rackets feature. Instead of simply collecting money from purchased properties you now spend influence points to “shakedown” a business.

Rackets open up at level 4 and you only have two choices to shakedown.

• Three-Card Monte
• Strip Club

To shakedown these businesses you begin by clicking “Ready to Collect” and then “Shakedown”. Each of them have a time frame for the shakedown to occur and you come back in the appropriate number of hours to collect your illicit gains.

Another interesting aspect of the feature is that you now have an experience bar for each business and you level them just like you do for jobs. What the rewards are I do not know yet.

You may purchase new businesses to shakedown. The first costs $5,000, the second $10,000 and I am assuming that the expense goes up from there. I cannot attest to this but I have been told that you may have a maximum of 5 shakedowns going at any one time. I will let you know on that part as soon as I can.

The concept of this feature seems to be to keep players more involved in the game and give them less down time. If you have a copy of The Ultimate Mafia Wars Leveling Guide you already know how cut down time to a minimum and thus the feature will have little impact on you.

Many seem to dislike the feature because they have to come back and collect at intervals dictated by the racket that you are working on. The Strip Club has a 22 hour wait to collect and I believe that Three-Card Monte is 4 hours.

I am not sure how Rackets are going to impact the game as yet. I cannot form an educated opinion due to my lack of experience with the feature thus far. I asked others who play what they thought of the feature and have heard everything from how much they love the feature from some and how much they hate the feature from others. There is even a small group that is ready to quit playing over it.

I would love to hear your opinion on it so feel free to leave comments below. Let’s get a discussion going.

To Twink Or Not To Twink

Let me start off by explaining the word “Twink.” Twink or Twinking is the process of obtaining items and equipment for a character that they could never have gotten at their level of expertise. The process of twinking has been around for many years, actually as long as there have been online games and the argument of twinking vs. non-twinking as been around just as long.

One side believes that giving a character items far and above their level is just fine since in most cases they have already paid the price of leveling and obtaining superior items once and should not have to do it again. The other side believes that twinking should not be allowed at all. The non-twink camp is usually but not always made up of people who do not have a higher level character and are getting there butts handed to them in PvP.

This ongoing argument has lead many gaming companies to attach level requirements to the drop items in their games. Fortunately for us this has not been the case in Mafia Wars or other Zynga games.

Just for fun I decided to start a brand spanking new character in Mafia Wars and turn him into a terror from day one. I have not yet started recruiting a mafia for him because I want him to be completely ready.

He was created over a week ago and I have not started the leveling process as yet because I want him to be ready to rock when I begin the process. He should be ready to start next week.

Over the last week or so I have been using more than a dozen other accounts to start feeding him items and consumables. I will start playing him when he has the following.

501 – Canonazo
501 – Armored State Car

Once these numbers are reached I will begin recruiting. First I will recruit select people to fill top mafia positions giving this character the best start possible. Other items I will have before I begin will be ample Politico Corrupto, Blackmail Photos, Illegal Transaction Records, Untraceable Cell Phone, Computer Set-up, and any other consumable that I can think of since I do not want to spend time farming them.

Doing all of the preliminary work with my other accounts will give this character a distinct advantage over other players his own level. How much of an advantage? Honestly I cannot give you an answer here because this is the first time I have tried this in Mafia Wars. Only time will tell if this character will become the hitlist monster that I am hoping for

Twinking works in many other games and I am quite sure that it can work in Mafia Wars as well. If you want to give it a whirl create a new character and begin feeding it all of the high level items that you can. Once you have 501 of the best offensive and defensive items start recruiting your mafia, but do it selectively. The first people you should recruit are those that you know will give you the highest bonus in your Top Mafia. Once you have them in place you can go on a recruiting binge. Do not start attacking others until you have at least 500 mafia and you should have a distinct advantage over most players your own level due to your advanced equipment.