MySpace Mobsters Strategy Guide

The Mobsters app is doing the rounds on MySpace these days, and everyone wants to get in on the fun of breaking the law and a few noses along the way.

As an up and coming ruffian, your first decision is to choose what class of mobster you want to be, there are three different types, and these will affect the game moving forward so take a little time to make sure you pick the one you want. You can roam the streets as a bulletproof thug, a strung out insomniac, or a blinged out tycoon.

Playing as a bulletproof mobster, you'll regain your energy a little quicker, meaning you can run missions faster. This is helpful if you want to make money and gain experience points to level up your character.

An insomniac regains stamina faster than other classes, meaning you can get into fights more often. Fighting can be a great way of making money, and gain experience, but is much less predictable than missions. On the other hand, going around and punching random people in the face is a great way to show off your new found inner gangster.

The tycoons always managed to squeeze out that extra profit from everything they do, and money makes the world go round, also for a mobster. Use this option if you want to make money faster, an excellent option if you want to level up slowly.

Hitting the streets

Having chosen your calling, it's time to hit the streets and start marking out your territory. Starting out, your options are limited, you have no equipment, no friends and no money. So start out by doing a couple of muggings and make enough for your first crowbar. You're now ready for your first residential burglary that will hopefully land you enough money to buy a .38 special, and your ticket to grand theft auto, which is the last mission you can run by yourself without any additional people in your gang. For your first foray into organized crime, you're doing pretty good. You should have some cash in your pocket, and also level up for the first time before you run out of energy, and can get a well deserved rest. Just sitting around with your money lined with money and just a puny handgun to keep you safe is not going to work out too good though, you need to get that money in the bank or invested as soon as you can before someone shoots you with a shotgun and steal your money.

To deposit money into a bank account you need at least $10 000, which you probably don't have yet so you need to protect your money either by investing it in equipment or land, or by logging out and waiting until you've regained enough energy to run some more missions. By this point you can probably buy a Beretta 9mm or a shotgun, if you want to fight a lot, this is a good idea, get the shotgun if you have to choose, it's an excellent defensive weapon and will make for a nice warm welcome to any hoodlums sneaking around in the shadows looking to take out a new mobster.

However, if you have managed to scrape together $5000 so far, you have the opportunity to get into the real moneymaking business of mobsters, real estate. Put your $5000 towards a vacant lot, and watch the money tick in every hour without any effort on your part what so ever. Keep running missions, but as soon as you can, get a townhouse for your vacant lot. Going forward in the game, always focus on buying real estate and developing properties. This will in time generate so much income that you can buy anything you want. Make sure you have enough weapons to defend yourself at the level you are at, and put any extra money towards your territory. Pretty soon you will be making enough money that you can start growing your mob and developing your mobster.

It's all in the family

Once you start gaining experience and level up your mobster, getting people to join your mob becomes crucial. Not only will you need additional mobsters to run most of the missions in the game, but on your own you're going to be an easy target for anybody, regardless of how many weapons you buy. Each mobster in your gang can fight using one weapon, one piece of armor and one vehicle. So having 10 mini guns won't help anything if you can only use one of them, and likewise, having 10 gang members won't help you anything if you only have one gun. It's important that you keep your gang well equipped, guns and armor and preferably a car for every member in your gang. As your gang grows, maintaining all the equipment you'll need will start to get very expensive, and here is where having a strong real estate portfolio really comes into play. Make sure your property investments are yielding enough to cover your maintenance costs and you will never have to worry about money.

In this game, only your friends can join your mob, and you can invite them all to join you. If they join your gang, you will automatically also join theirs. Most of us don't have 500 dedicated friends waiting to join a virtual crime cartel though, so you might want to consider some options for growing your mob. Personally, I don't want to fill up my friends list with people I don't know to be able to have a huge gang, but there are several websites where people wants people to sign up to their gangs. There's also a comments function where you can send comments to other gangster in the game, where many players requesting to be added to gangs. No matter how you choose to go about it, you will not be able to get very far in the game unless you can grow your mob to about 15 - 20 people at the very least. The maximum limit is 500, so there's plenty of room to grow.

Dodging the bullets

The world of organized crime and mayhem is a crowded and competitive world, and anyone is fair game. To keep yourself and your money safe, there's a couple of things you need to always keep in mind. First of all, try to keep up your mob size as you go through the levels, as you level up you'll notice that the gangs become larger and larger. It's simply not possible to defend yourself on the higher levels without enough people watching your back. So make lot's of criminally inclined friends, and have them join your crew.

Second, you'll be attacked a lot less if you log of MySpace whenever you're not mobbing or doing anything with your profile. If you're not logged on, you won't show up in the list of people to fight, and you can sleep a lot safer. Most importantly though, never keep too much loose change in your pockets, with your real estate empire paying you every hour you can't keep all your money in the bank at all times, but make sure you put your money in the bank as often and as fast as you can. It's irritating enough to have someone attack you when you're asleep, it doesn't feel any better if the low lives also take off with a good chunk of your illegally earned money.

My last tip is, it's not that bad to go to the hospital every now and then, if you're in the hospital, no one can attack you, at the end of a mobster session, go out and attack other mobsters looking for easy targets, and keep fighting until you're in the hospital. Always pick your fights carefully, never attack using the button on the list of people that show up under the fight menu, always check their profile and chose attack from there. This gives you a chance to estimate the kinds of weapons the person has, and you can also see how many fights they have won and lost, and of course, try not to attack people in massive gangs. It could be just a front and they don't really have many weapons for all their gang members, but why risk it? If you win a fight, always take note of how much money you made, often it will be nothing, sometimes a few hundred maybe, but sometimes you hit the jackpot and can score thousands of dollars in one fight, when you win a fight like that, keep attacking the same person until either or both of you end up in the hospital, you can make a lot of money that way.

One last tip for picking victims to brutalize is to check the news feed on your main page, the feed will have a list of everyone that's attacked you lately, and it will also let you know if you won the fight. If someone attacked you and lost, you know you can safely attack them back in most cases, you'll win the fight, unless they're already in the hospital.

Developing your mobster

Running missions and winning fights will earn you experience points which will allow you to level up. For each level you gain, you'll receive three skill points that can be used to develop your mobsters skills. There's five different areas where your character can develop his skills, attack and defense strength, energy, health, and stamina.

The Attack and DefenseStrength is added to the total attack and defense values of your mob in a fight. Your attack rating will be the attack values of all your weapons, armor and vehicles used in the fight, plus your attack strength rating, this is calculated against your opponents defense rating and determines how much damage you deliver. Conversely, the defense strength rating is added to your total defense points, and compared to your opponents total attack strength. These stats should always be considered when leveling up your mobster, and are probably the most important stats after the energy rating.

The Max Energy rating is used in running missions, the higher the missions, the more energy they require, up to a massive 150 energy points for the most hardcore mission. You might not want to run your max energy that high, but if you plan to run missions you will have to boost this value over time. If you'd rather make a name for yourself bounty hunting and kicking other peoples ass, you'll probably want to use your stat points on your attack and defense strength instead.

Max Health, this might seem like a good idea, but this is one of the worst things you can use your skill points on. Depending on how you play, a high health rating might even be a disadvantage. If you're being attacked while not playing, the more health you have, the longer people can beat up on you and possibly steal your money before you end up in hospital. Don't use your stats point on this attribute, it is not worth it.

Max Stamina is the only one of the stats upgrades that requires two stat points to raise. I personally don't use a lot of stat points on this stat, I feel that the attack and defense strength is more important. Usually I run out of health before stamina anyway. But again, if you want to be a bounty hunter fighting other players becomes the main purpose in the game, and you will want to increase this skill also so you can keep fighting for longer.