Mafia Wars, a Zynga favorite, has added some new toys – Boosts! Never got one yet? Well they’re not hard to come by.

Here’s what the game shows about boosts:

These one-shot items can help you fight or defend better, and even give you discounts on energy required for jobs. Once consumed they are gone, so plan your actions wisely. You can only buy up to 20 of each boost each day.

Some examples:

The boosts are initially collected by re-vaulting collections.  Each collection has a specific bonus it gives.  Each bonus boost is a one shot item.

Making life easier with these though is the ability to buy a bunch up each day. They don’t stack, meaning only one boost of a type gets used at a time.  In addition, they get used automatically when you are the victim of an attack if you’ve used a defense boost.

The boosts awarded for each collection are given off to the side of each collection.  No need to hunt them down for research.

I’m looking forward to trying these out to see just how effective they are. Hoping you do the same and can share your experiences.

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Mafia Wars on Facebook just got easier. They’ve incorporated a window on the Home page that shows up in the same place as the Improve Your Character box.

The new box cycles through helping with missions, sending gifts, and even adding mob members.  It not only prompts you, it takes care of business right in the window. You’re then presented with the next offer to help someone. No new window is spawned, and there’s no redraw of the screen. Very efficient.

What’s the biggest value though? The quick turn around on mission support. I was able to request assistance for multiple missions very quickly.  Likewise I was able to help on several missions in very short order. Heck, I was even able to send folks energy boosts.  This is going to greatly reduce the wait time for mission assists to pay out.

Cheers to Zynga for a useful and easy to use improvement.

Tonight Zynga releases Mafia Wars Lottery on Facebook. You can follow the discussion on the Zynga Mafia Wars official forums.

You can see it now in action though it’s disabled; check it out here. (may be live by the time you check this out)

The lottery spawns a whole new collection as well. I’ll keep you posted here.

Sometimes you get lucky and spot stuff.

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So you’ve read that you can enjoy Mafia Wars missions and more in Cuba. But you might not have known that properties is a whole new ball game. Gone is Mafia Mike’s place; now we have plantations, factories, and fields.

The Zynga team has this to say:

Each Cuban business can be purchased once and produces crates of a particular product every 3 hours. Once the crates are produced, they will be stored in your warehouse, ready to be sold for a profit.

Also, this bit of information as well:

Your Cuban businesses can be upgraded in the following ways:

Quality (5 levels) – your business will produce a higher quality product every three hours, allowing you to sell each crate for more pesos; quality upgrades cost twice as much as quantity and capacity upgrades.
Capacity (10 levels) – your business can store a larger quantity of crates in the warehouse.
Output (10 levels) – your business will produce more crates every 3 hours.
Remember to come back often to sell off your crates and maximize your profit!

It’s going to be fun and it’s becoming more about resource management, ala Civ and Sim City, than just about knocking over jewelry stores. There are still missions though and some of them are an interesting take on Cuban crime, such as ransacking a local plantation.

I’m pumped about the new features and will keep you posted.

Please share any goodies, tips, and tricks here or on Facebook.

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Lots of folks are playing Mafia Wars and not getting all their entitled too. What? You’re level 200 and have great stats? Did you know what all those tiers you dabbled in on your way up give rewards?

Rewards and not all that cheesy either. Not only do some jobs provide special items, each tier has a set of collections to be completed. Each set you vault results in a specific bonus.

Beyond that though, completing a tier has it’s own rewards. So you completed a tier one time and forgot about it? Your loss. Complete a tier three times and you’ll receive a unique prize. Each tier has its own.

Completing the Street Thug tier three times nets you the Pistol Bayonet: +4% damage dealt in fights. Another tier mastery drops an item with 30 seconds off of your health regeneration timer. Each is along those lines, enhancing some facet of your profile.

Unfortunately no one else can really help you complete these. They’re drudgery honestly when you could be doing more rewarding missions monetarily. Truth though is that you’ll have more money than you can use in this game, so don’t sweat it.

Here’s a link to the mother of all Mafia Wars rewards lists. If it still works, bookmark it or memorize it, if not, start compiling your own with your mafia.

Good hunting,
Don Jordan
FB Profile – Mafia Wars link is on the profile on the left.

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