Mafia Wars Strategy Guide: Banking, Fighting, Robbing & Getting Attacked

This is a part of my Mafia Wars strategy guide, which I have broken up into several mini guides for easier browsing. Be sure to check out my other guides for Mafia Wars. I play this game on Facebook but most of the strategies work the same on other platforms, such as MySpace.

BANK

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.

FIGHTING

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 than I have because more members, which means more weapons that will be used against opponents. Note that only your top 501 Mafia members can help in a fight.

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 that 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!

I have noticed that I often get very high level opponents on my attack list. When this happens in New York, I switch to Cuba and often times my opponents will be lower levels. The opposite is true sometimes as well, so then I switch to New York from Cuba. if you keep giving upper-level opponents on both locations, you can either wait and try later or throw one fight away and hope for lower-level opponents of the attack list.

ROBBING

Robbing is a variation of attacking but one in which yields more cash but fewer experience points. If you need more cash, especially if you need it fast, robbing is the way to go. After you really get your weapons and stats together, you should be able to make at least $300k-$800k per robbing, depending on which properties you attack. It is always best to attack the most expensive properties because they yield the most cash. You don't want to waste energy and stamina on cheap properties because they will not yield as much money. While you do get fewer experience points from robbing, you still do receive points -- I usually receive an average of two experience points each time I rob someone and win. One good thing about robbing versus attacking is that, once you successfully rob a property, you can keep robbing them successfully every time unless they build their stats up later, which you really should not be concerned with because you probably won't find them again to rob. This is a good thing because you usually know that you won't waste stamina or energy due to a loss from a critical hit from your opponent.

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!