Mafia Wars Tips
Here is a list of useful tips for Mafia Wars that will advance you along quicker.
Health
Health is the most meaningless of attributes to dump skill points in to. You can go to the hospital and completely refill your health every 45 seconds. If you are getting attacked by other players, unless it is from a hit, they can no longer hurt you once your health drops below 20. The only place where more health helps rather than hurts is in the boss fights in the game, as outlined in Doin’ the Job, but as there is no special reward for completing the boss fights and there are bonus items you get from doing jobs to make the boss fights easier, you don’t need more health. Finally, most of the time you are logged in, you will be wanting to keep your health as low as possible to minimize the number of fights lost, so it is highly recommended you never bump your health.
It may seems a high health will help you survive better if someone puts a hit on you, since if your health was high enough, you could heal every 45 seconds and never be knocked out. The problem with this theory is the hit never goes away until it is completed. You will have to sleep eventually and then that huge pool of health will just turn into a huge number of lost fights before you are inevitably knocked out. Since there is no defense from a hit and no way to get it cancelled, you are better off just dying in as few fights as possible so the hit gets cleared and you are back in the “protected” health range of 0-19.
Defense
Defense works the same way as attack except it doesn’t seem to have an affect on damage other than as a point of comparison to your opponent’s health. Now since property robberies are limited by your level as far as the number of mafia that can be brought, having extra defense points will help defend your properties assuming that your mafia size is at least equal to your level. Once again though, at higher levels this becomes way more meaningful.
Attack
Your attack skill has two main uses. When you initiate an attack (whether through Fight, Rob, or attempting a Hit), your total attack value is compared to your defender’s total defense value. Your attack value also has a minor impact on the amount of damage you cause whether attacking or defending.
Fightin’ and Robbin’ gets into more details over how the fight rolls are actually made, but here is a quick summary. For your mafia size, X, the game chooses your X best items with the highest attack value, X best armors, and X best vehicles. Outside of special loot items and before level 100, this means a Chain Gun at 16/14, a Body Armor at 4/7, and a Town Car at 10/12. So roughly every member of your family (assuming you have enough items for all of them) will add 30 attack and 33 defense. So 6 levels worth of skill points in attack is the equivalent of bumping your mafia size by 1 (whether through real people or the Godfather hired guns). Once your level is above 150 and a lot of your opponents will have a mafia size of 501, attack points can be useful. At low levels, it is a complete waste and dwarfed by your mafia size.
Attack
Your attack skill has two main uses. When you initiate an attack (whether through Fight, Rob, or attempting a Hit), your total attack value is compared to your defender’s total defense value. Your attack value also has a minor impact on the amount of damage you cause whether attacking or defending.
Fightin’ and Robbin’ gets into more details over how the fight rolls are actually made, but here is a quick summary. For your mafia size, X, the game chooses your X best items with the highest attack value, X best armors, and X best vehicles. Outside of special loot items and before level 100, this means a Chain Gun at 16/14, a Body Armor at 4/7, and a Town Car at 10/12. So roughly every member of your family (assuming you have enough items for all of them) will add 30 attack and 33 defense. So 6 levels worth of skill points in attack is the equivalent of bumping your mafia size by 1 (whether through real people or the Godfather hired guns). Once your level is above 150 and a lot of your opponents will have a mafia size of 501, attack points can be useful. At low levels, it is a complete waste and dwarfed by your mafia size.
To maximize the efficiency with which you are completing jobs it is worth noting it is almost always beneficial to complete the job mastery levels since this will get you more skill points. There was a brief period where “Exterminate a Rival Family” provided more than 2 XP per energy with Top Mafia bonuses and it was more worthwhile to just do that job over and over again, but that was rebalanced. Also, when you level, any extra XP you earn is rolled over into the next level. This means the ideal situation is to get 1 XP shy of leveling and then do a job that provides the most XP for you last so you get the most spill-over into the next level. For instance, at level 4, you could do “Mugging” until you are at 44/45 and then do “Auto Theft” which would push you 7 XP into level 5 with a full energy refill.
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!
