upcoming Mafia Wars Live broadcast

The next Mafia Wars Live broadcast is this coming Wednesday. You can tune in right here at 3:30PM Pacific time on July 27th. If you have questions for the guys that you'd like them to answer during the broadcast, go to this forum thread to submit them.

20% off marketplace items

Don't get excited, this only apples to boosts, loot, and crates, and 'special loots', whatever they may be. You'll see this pop-up when you visit the Marketplace.

skill point reallocation available now

Skill point reallocation is on in the marketplace right now, for those of you who watch for it. Check under Stat Items > Skill Points.

Top Giftable loot

Here is a top giftable loot chart I threw together using Word. Let me know if there are any corrections to be made. Feel free to share.

top giftable attack weapon: Roman Legion
top giftable defense weapon: Spaghetti Western
top giftable attack armor: Armatura Ramarro
top giftable defense armor: Swiss Guard
top giftable attack vehicle: Marco Marino AF
top giftable defense vehicle: Jackal ATV
top giftable attack animal: Sea Eagle
top giftable defense animal: Italian Porcupine

7/22 This & Next Week

Ya know, these weekly updates aren't really that cool when you know they leave off most of what's really coming for the next week...Someone please tell Zynga to stop wasting our time with these blog posts. The last few weeks they haven't revealed even half of what was to come. Yes, we KNOW there is going to be a freaking mission event. What else? Anyway, here is this week's "This & Next Week" from the Mafia Wars blog:

Coming Next Week*
*As far as currently scheduled...for now.
New Mission Event: Betrayal in Bangkok
This may be your last night in Bangkok, but one night can make the world your oyster. The city is shutting down so you'll need to raid it while you still can.

Farmers Insurance Loot Event
It's a rough world out there. Protect your valuables by collecting 7 Farmers Insurance items from jobs and fights. You'll also be able to earn fighting and robbing boosts.

And this:

This Week's Major Bug Fixes
No notable bug fixes to report.

That's a shame, no notable bugs fixed this week, and there are so many.

Ruby Level Loot makes quiet exit

Now that the Ruby Level Loot event in Brazil is over, I'm kind of glad. I didn't like that event, and I still only got the one Firefly throughout the whole thing. Of course, I gave up rather quickly and went back to focusing on getting ices for the current Ice Season.

I know some players were able to get a lot of the ruby level loot, though. How much did you end up with?

Big Heist event FAQ

The FAQ is up for this Big Heist robbing event with yet more new boosts. You can check it out here, but most of it's just filler.

Q: Is there a limit of how many Rob Squads I can get?
A: Yes. There is a maximum daily limit of 50 Rob Squads that you can collect. OF that total you can collect a maximum of 2 from free gifts and a maximum of 5 free Rob Squads from clicking on your friends’ feeds each day.

Of note was this item. So I guess I was wrong earlier when I assumed that we could have 50 at one time. Nuh-uh, it's only 50 a DAY. That increases the suckage factor of this event significantly, imho.

But what's this about getting TWO from free gifts? That must be a typo, because I know I've collected more than 2 from free gifts already since this event started a little while ago. And if we can only get 5 a day from feeds and "2" from free gifts, how the heck are we supposed to get the rest of the 50 every day?

Looks like this will be around for about a week, give or take. No timers, this time. Zynga surprises me, they love their timers on everything!

EVENT FATIGUE

Do I even need to say anything about this picture? Of course I do! :D

As a person who used to love completing every challenge the game threw at me, times like these are frustrating. How many times do we have to bang our heads against this wall? This is WAY TOO MUCH going on the game right now!

Back in March and April of this year, event fatigue was a huge issue. Lately, I've been seeing it come up more and more often. Back then, Zynga seemed to gradually slow up on the events, and in early May, we actually saw a break in events, but it didn't last long, and there hasn't been a break since. That was almost three months ago :-/

And Zynga is showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, they seem to be piling on the events more and more. And LOOK at the events going on right now. There is NO way to complete all of them. You've got the Ice Season, which requires you to focus on using stamina fighting. I'm not done yet, and I wanted the stupid badge. Brazil Ruby Level Loot was a complete joke for me. I STILL have only 1 item. I only have Recife at ruby mastery, so even if I tried, I could only get in one or two jobs before I ran out of energy for the entire level. There's the ever-present mission event, which I now habitually ignore. Out of nowhere today we have the robbing thing, which I can't do because I need my stamina to finish the Ice Season, and the Italy mastery thing. On top of all that, rumors of Bangkok closing, which remain unconfirmed so we don't know if we need to work on it now or not. 

This is insane

more on The Big Heist

Here's more info on The Big Heist that I've found since my initial post about it.As stated in another update by the Mafia Wars blog, you can store up to 50 Rob Squads to run your Big Heist during this week-long event. I assume that means at any given time you can have 50 Rob Squads.

That's not too shabby, I guess, since you can send them as free gifts and receive them as gifts. We'll see.
I really don't have time to mess with robbing right now. I'm getting kind of pissed off at all the stuff we're supposed to be staying on top of in the game right all at once.

more info on The Italian Jobs mastery event

The Mafia Wars blog made a post about the Italian mastery event, which provided a couple pieces of information we didn't have previously.

• There will be no limit to how many Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds you can collect
• The event ends at 10AM Pacific on the 26th.

The Big Heist - Robber Interuptus

When you finish a robbing session with the new Rob Squad toy there are a couple of simple things to keep in mind if you want to use the Spockholm bookmarklet Robber:

Refresh the Board First

If you do not refresh the board after using a Rob Squad the Robber bookmarklet will stall... no error... no freeze... just no activity.

Refreshing Screen Finish

If you stop using Robber do not refresh the screen you may apply a Rob Squad to a partial page:

While the top line LOOKS like it has not been robbed... notice the refresh value is 0... these properties were robbed with the bookmarklet... I did not get a pop up to see what the bonus Xp was, but I was able to confirm that I got 2 Diamondbacks thanks to Inventory History.

How are you enjoying the new toys?

The Big Heist robbing event

I just started noticing these littering my news feed, and then saw a post on the fan page by one of our admins. Time to investigate!

I clicked on one and collected a "Rob Squad".

And there's now a big banner on the Mafia Wars home page about The Big Heist. "Max out robbing for 2x Rewards".

You can also ask for Rob Squads from your friends. 

On the robbing page I now see a Rob All button, and it says 88 stamina in parenthesis. That would be the total stamina cost to rob the entire board.

 I got this for a few seconds *g*

But then I saw the results screen with all properties robbed. Very nice! It's much easier to rob all properties with a single click, rather than clicking on each property individually.

Another Mistyfied admin noticed the additional bonus from using the Rob All button.

 The next big question would be, how many times a day can we collect these Rob Squads and use the Rob All feature? We know Zynga loves their irritatingly-low limits, and they do not disappoint in this case either. I got the message that I can only collect 5 Rob Squads 'from feeds' per day. That was only the second post I clicked on, but I did ask for Rob Squads via a feed post a few minutes ago, so you can only get a total of 5, at least from feeds, either your own or clicking on someone else's post. That sucks.

Lastly for now, I noticed the robbing screen has gotten some minor graphical changes. The Refresh button got a facelift, and so did the burners. It rather irritates me when Zynga wastes time (and I assume employee resources and therefore funding money) on updating stupid sh*t like this when there are so many other things in the game that the PLAYERS think Zynga should be focusing on instead.

3x Mastery in Italy + Ruby-Throated Hummingbird

For the next four days, get 3x the job mastery when working in Italy! Additionally, Italy jobs will apparently sometimes drop the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird, which carries stats of (86,86).

As the guys have mentioned before during Mafia Wars Live broadcasts, they like to have "two new cities". Currently the two newest locations are Italy and Brazil. We've seen many hints about the coming new city. The new city is rumored to be Chicago, but that is largely based on popular opinion and there has been no verification from Zynga to that effect. In fact, I have seen it said, "I wouldn't go with Chicago yet".

Thanks Jimmy for the head's up!

Vengeance is back!

Vengeance is back! I went to burn through my accumulated stamina this morning, and after I lost a fight I noticed the option was back. Once again I decided to try it out ~ mainly just to know how it works. I highly doubt I'll ever REALLY want to spend 3 reward points just to get someone back for ONE hit. I might be more interested if it actually let me hit the other opponent until I iced them.

This time, on the your side of the fight results screen, you'll see the vengeance boost was used. 

If like me you don't generally use fight boosts and leave them turned off, you'll want to re-check your boost settings after using a Vengeance boost. The game automatically turns boosts ON when you initiate using a Vengeance boost. Makes sense, if you think about it :)

Collectors: Daylight Savings loot available

Hey collectors, the collector's edition Daylight Savings is back for one last round. There are 5,000 available for 35 reward points, which can be found via a banner on your Mafia Wars home page or the Marketplace.

As Nancy posted earlier, we now know we can expect these 'collector's edition' items every Friday.

Collector's Day

The banner is up... the item is loaded... everyone is waiting at the door? Maybe...

The Official Mafia Wars Blog has announced that this will be a weekly event...

So now we all know... I would love to know the back story on the name of this helmet... but that is a different issue... I'm more of a 4x4 mafia chick than a 2 wheel warrior :-)!

why can't we close unwanted Secret Stashes?

I'm sure I'm just nit-picking here, but why can't I close out stashes that I have no intention of asking for help on?

While I've had more Secret Stash successes lately, more often than not the stash is unsuccessful. Then you have the option to ask friends for help stealing the stash. Sometimes it's something good, like the Savannah Patroller that I collected in the above screen shot.

But that other item, the Ice Climbing Gear? Those are terrible stats, imho. Not only would I not want to bother my friends by sending a request to help me get that item, I really just don't want the item. And so they sit there, and sit, and sit, until they finally expire.

We need a close button!

Final Day - Ruby Loot Event

The clock is ticking down on the Ruby Level Loot event... just a day to go for find what you may!

This week's mission helped me more than anything... with all of the jobs in sections of Brazil that I had ruby mastery I found 1 piece or so every 3500 energy level.

I like that there is no single mega loot for completing a set... and that no achievement is resting on the outcome... once I had one of everything I found some joy in an unexpected icon popping up during my mission work... since not much else seemed to be dropping!

I faced the raven twice this week and both times the Ruby Loot was the bright spot in my playing session.

I only have one district to go in Brazil... and if I was totally done I would REALLY have welcomed this as "something to do" in a city I had finished.

How did you like this event? What kind of events would you like to see in cities you have finished?

skill point reallocation available now

For those of you who like to transfer some existing skill points into other skills, now is your chance. Then option is available in the marketplace right now! And thanks Matt Powell for the heads up.

update: UnlockedMW toolbar v1.1.7

The UnlockedMW blog announced yesterday that a new version of the toolbar is available for download. Alex says this version is working very well, and indeed it's been working fine for me since I installed it this morning.

Many players recently experienced issues with the toolbar, or found that, as in my case, it disappeared altogether from your game without uninstalling it :-/ Myself and other Mistyfied admins and contributors continue to get questions about this, so I talked to Alex briefly this morning. He explained that the issue was actually overusage of the toolbar, because the hosting server could not handle all the traffic. 

It's good news that so many players are using the toolbar so often, but it's costly news for the toolbar's creator. They have switched to a better service, which can for now handle and adjust to the toolbar's growing use. Monthly costs have gone up with this change, and are expected to go higher.

If you use the toolbar frequently, consider donating a few dollars to keep it going. In cases like these, a few dollars from a few people go a long way. You can donate to UnlockedMW by going directly to their site at www.unlockedmw.com

You can install or reinstall the toolbar from the UnlockedMW downloads page, for either Chrome or Firefox. Be sure to also visit the UnlockedMW fan page for support and updates.

Mission: The Ties that Frustrate Fusion

So here I am... close to the end...

Having navigated the hazard of click speed to fill 5 Crew Slots....

Used free fights to take out the Guards and save 160 stamina...

Trying to jump the Fusion hurdle gracefully...

At the end of my 2nd fill of energy...

I get a Cerveja? Sure... I got a ruby vest in this run... that's the little gold asterisk... but a beverage... I want the beverage AFTER the mission!

What is a Cerveja?

It is not a cocktail... like the others in it's Brazil Collection

It is a beer.

What do you get when you don't know that and search for a recipe?

Frango Na Cerveja - Chicken in Beer

Pot{[Chicken + (Caramelized onion)](350 degree oven +30 min)}Foil

Bifinhos Estufados Com Cerveja - Steak Stuffed with Beer

Frying Pan + Steak + Onion = Grease

Grease + Flour + Beer = Gravy

[Gravy +Cooked (Steak + Onion)](low heat+1 hour)

Given the sweltering heat here today the oven for a half hour beats stovetop simmering for an hour... I hope that they are intending this for a cube steak? If you would like the link to the full Epicurious recipe comment on our fan page and I'll give ya' the scoop :-)

Now I'm going to get a beer and an energy pack and finish this mission!!

Related Posts:

Timeline Walk Through: Mission Event - The Tie That Doesn't Bind

Energy Spend Estimate: Mission Event - The Ties That Suck Energy

Bangkok closing

There's been a leak, shall we say ~ the rumor mill is starting to churn with news that Bangkok is closing, and this time it's probably for real. In addition, word is that a new city is coming soon. We already had a few inklings of the new city, as it has been mentioned during some Mafia Wars Live broadcasts, plus the recent survey about what new city/location idea we liked best.

Again these are put forth as rumors, as things that 'may not happen'. That being said, every indication is go. Gah, I am so far from finishing Bangkok. I was just working on it again earlier :-/