the complete Mob wars strategy guide - Mob wars
Facebook applicaiton
Mob Wars is a game application in the world’s largest social
network, Facebook. It attracts millions of users daily. David
Maestri aka Jason Gilbert developed this game while he was
working for the web hosting company, Freewebs. Mob Wars soon
proved to be very addictive and thus highly lucrative; now it
makes around a million dollars for the developer every month. If
you already know about it or are interested in playing it, then
this strategy guide is for you.
Mob Wars is similar to any other Facebook application. Simply
find its page by searching, and you will get the option to
install it in your profile.
The Game Basics
In this game, you play a Mafia boss, with a mob equipped with
weapons to fight other mobs. You also have the ability to rule
various parts of your city in order to make a standing hourly
income from them. The size of your mob is constituted by your
friends who also play the game. You can expand your mob by
adding more friends and inviting them to the game.
The most important aspect of the game is the mob. The larger the
mob, the more powerful it is. You can grow your mob through
various levels, which depend on its experience, measured in
experience points. Your mob gains experience points every time
it completes a job or wins fights with other mobs. On leveling
up, you are awarded three skill points and one Godfather favor
point (see below to know more of them). You can use them to
upgrade your mob.
In order to develop your mob, you have the following services:
Hospital - to regain your health if it falls below a certain
percentage
Bank - to safe-keep your money
City - to purchase land and develop it into money-making
establishments
Stockpile - to purchase the weapons your mob needs
Jobs - to earn some money and experience
Fight list - to attack other mobs similar to yours and earn some
money and experience
The Godfather - for some special services we shall see below
Here are the four main attributes of your mob: Health to fight
with other mobs; Stamina to fight more often; Cash to purchase
land or weaponry; and Energy to do jobs.
Health is lost when you fight other mobs; the loss depends on
the size and strength of the rival mobs. One fight takes up one
stamina point. Expenditure of energy and cash depends on the
kind of job done and the type of building purchased.
All these attributes regenerate when lost. Income is generated
hourly. One stamina point requires two minutes to regenerate;
health and energy points require about 4 minutes each to
regenerate. However, certain other aspects of the game, which we
will see later, decide faster regeneration of some or all of
these attributes.
The special service, the Godfather, imparts you services in
return for favor points, which are awarded every time you level
up.
Starting Your Game
When you start your game for the first time, you have two
choices to make—your mob boss name and mob boss type. The name
of the mob boss can be anything you wish, and it represents you
in the game. The type can be one of these three: Tycoon, which
gains money faster; Insomniac, which gains energy faster; or
Bulletproof, which recuperates faster.
Your first strategy is in choosing which mob boss type you need
to be. For instance, the Tycoon mobs gather money faster, making
Tycoon the perfect mob boss type for you if you have less time
to play the game and wish to have a lot of city investments. If
you wish to play more often and want to be a fighter, then you
should choose Bulletproof type. If you want to do more jobs and
earn experience that way, then you should choose Insomniac.
The Hitlist
Besides the features mentioned above, there is one more called
the hitlist. Any mob boss can add any other to the hitlist to
have him killed immediately. You can go to the profile of a mob
boss and click ‘add to hitlist’ link for this. You need to place
a bounty on the mob boss, and it will be awarded to anyone that
kills him.
Normally, a mobster cannot attack any mob far above or below his
own level. It’s so designed, because otherwise very high level
mobs can easily attack smaller mobs, creating a great imbalance
in the game. But if you put a player into hitlist, that player
can be attacked by all currently active players of Mob Wars.
Hence, a mob far higher up than the target’s level can easily
attack and kill him.
Mobsters in hitlist usually don’t last more than one or two
minutes; and when dying, the mobster loses a great amount of
experience. You can put a mobster to hitlist as often as you
wish, but he should be alive.
The bounty amount of a mobster is roughly ten times the income
he generates from his city investments.
To protect a mobster from getting killed through hitlist, there
is an option called ignition rigging. By spending a specified
amount of money, stamina, and energy, you can rig any mobster’s
ignition, which means, the mobster will get killed next time he
adds you to hitlist. This also is accessible from the profile
page of the mobster.
Strategy to Level Up Faster
If you want to be a really powerful mobster, you need to level
up faster. There are players who level up as many as five or ten
times a day, by playing rigorously. You can too.
It requires a lot of experience to level up faster, and you can
gain it by winning fights with mobs as powerful as yours.
Fighting small mobs with low power gives only a small amount of
experience.
A better way to level up faster is playing with a leveling
partner. Your leveling partner can be any player with a mob
almost as powerful as yours. You should agree on attacking each
other to gain experience for both. When you have a close
encounter and win it, you gain the maximum experience. You can
let your leveling partner attack you first until he exhausts all
his stamina. You should be willing to drop weaponry to let the
other win a fight. Afterwards, you can attack back and gain
experience.
This way, at the end of the day, both can level up several
times.
In order to level up, you need to invest your skill points on
stamina and health. If you do jobs to gain experience, you can
invest in energy too. The higher your health, the more the
experience points you get on a close encounter, and the higher
the stamina, the more the encounters you can have.
Equipping Your Mob
Your strategy to win more fights is equipping your mob with more
powerful weapons early on in the game. If you have a mob with
300 members, you actually have a mob size of 301 including
yourself. So, you need 301 of each item.
A mobster can wield one weapon, one defense item (such as the
bulletproof west), and one vehicle at a time. Hence, you need to
buy 301 guns, 301 armors, and 301 vehicles to fully equip your
mob. One thing to note is that many of these weapons have
upkeep, which is an hourly payment. You can levy this upkeep on
the property income you gain every hour.
You should look for jobs that earn you powerful weapons, such as
the Liquor Store Robbery, Jewelry Store Robbery, Drug Smuggling
by Sea, Illegal Weapon Smuggling, and Shipping Docks Raid. The
attraction of these weapons is that they are not only the most
powerful, but also don’t require any upkeep.
Using Skill Points
As mentioned earlier, you will get three skill points every time
you level up. These skill points can be used to make one of your
attributes better. Your attributes are attack strength, defense
strength, energy, health, and stamina. One skill point can
provide one point of attack strength, defense strength, or
energy; ten health points; or a half of stamina point.
If your mob boss is a Bulletproof type, you probably want to
fight a lot. Naturally, you want to invest a lot in attack and
defense strengths. When you attack a lot, you also get attacked
a lot. Therefore, you need to have a strong defense as well.
On the other hand, if you want to do more jobs, then you need to
increase your energy points.
If you wish to level up faster with a leveling partner, then you
should invest in health and stamina, as more health means more
experience per encounter, and more stamina means more
encounters.
Godfather Favor Points and Mob Wars Insider
Every time you level up, the Godfather awards you with a favor
point. These favor points should be accumulated to expend on
various services offered by the Godfather itself.
Sometimes, the Godfather offers you a lot of money in exchange
of ten favor points. Though the amount of money is tempting,
it’s not recommended to use this, as favor points are better
spent elsewhere. You may also be tempted by a superior weapon in
exchange for about 20 favor points. But wait some more time,
Godfather may offer the same weapon for half as many favor
points on special deals. The special deals are updated on your
Mob Wars home page. It is then that you need to purchase the
weapon.
But the most important investment at Godfather is something
called ‘the Mob Wars Insider’. This is a special privilege you
get by expending 100 favor points. The benefits of being an
insider are these:
You get faster regeneration of income, health, energy, and
stamina. This makes you as powerful as any other mob boss type.
You get two instead of one favor point when you level up.
20 per cent discount on the hospital charges.
There will be no more advertisement on the top of Mob Wars page.
But all these benefits last only for 31 days. But since they
help you level up pretty faster, you can be an insider again at
the end of those thirty-one days if you level up at least fifty
times. Once you have become the Insider, you can spend favor
points on any other offer—money, health, stamina, etc—as per
requirement.
Bounty Hunting
As we mentioned earlier, the hitlist is a place where you can
get a bounty by killing someone. Every time a player is placed
in the hitlist, every active player can attack him. This is
still very risky as mobsters of very high levels with great
defense strengths may be listed, and attacking them can actually
kill small mobsters.
You can access the hitlist and attack whoever is listed there.
If you make the kill, you can bag the listed bounty. Most of the
time, the bounty can be pretty substantial to risk blind
attacking.
To get many bounty kills, you need to be very active at the
hitlist, as there are thousands of players trying to pull off a
bounty. Winning a bounty is too difficult if you don’t have a
fast internet connection and a browser with scripts and images
disabled. Many experienced bounty hunters recommend Internet
Explorer.
When attacking the mob in hitlist, click the ‘attack’ button as
many times as possible before the page reloads with results.
This will help you increase the chance of getting a hit.
Getting many bounties is a great way to make huge amount of
money.
Investing in Land
In order to invest better on the City, you need to use a Mob
Wars return of investment (ROI) calculator. There are many
calculators available out there. You can simply Google “Mob Wars
Calculator” to find one. It will tell you which property to buy
and in what numbers.
While I use the Mob Wars Tool Bar, which updates the best
property to buy at any given time, before I discovered the tool
bar (and for playing on other computers/laptops that don't have
the tool bar installed) I always kept the Window's accessory
calculator open and used this basic formula:
Income of Property /divided by/ Price of One Property.
So, for example, right now in one of my games, income for a
Manufacturing Plant in Shanghai is $76,000. To buy one
Manufacturing Plant, it will cost $1,520,000,000.
So, I enter 76,000 into my calculator and divide it by
1,520,000,000, which yields 0.00005.
The income for one Night Club is $144,000 and it costs
$2,743,600,000. Dividing 144,000 by 2,743,600,000 yields
0.0000524.
Forget all the decimal points and consider which one is
higher, because we want a higher Return on Investment. The Night
Club has a slightly higher return than the Manufacturing Plant,
so it is worth more for me right now (later that will change!).
A Megacasino right now yields $1,250,000 and costs
$17,500,000,000. The calculation for ROI comes to 0.0000714, so
the Megacasino clearly is going to give me more income for my
money spent in comparison to the Night Club and Manufacturing
Plant. But remember, once purchased, the price will go up.
Therefore, the properties that give a higher return are
constantly changing as you play.
Mob Wars offers you to purchase city parts
in groups of 5, 10, 25, 50, or 100. Every time you purchase a
property, its price increases. Usually, buying in pack/bulk can give
you a better ROI.
Since your city income determines your bounty value, if you have
great city income, people will find it more expensive to add you
to hitlist. This is why it is recommended that you invest in
city very carefully to maximize your income. In higher levels,
the ROI-based investment in city becomes more and more important
as most properties will be priced very high.
Now, Mob Wars has city buildings categorized under real-world
city names, like New York, London, Vegas, Moscow, Shanghai, etc.
More properties open up as you level up.
Properties in London:
Empty Lot, Villa, Restaurant, City Block, Apartment, Hotel,
Downtown Square, Beachfront Lot, Highrise Apartment, Container
Yard, Office, Luxury Hotel, Beachfront Hotel, Casino, Marina.
(Complete list).
Properties in Chicago:
Indie Theatre, Small Hotel, Steel Mill, Banking Center,
Downtown Casino, Residential Highrise. (Complete list).
Properties in London:
Row House, Warehouse, Hotel, Theatre Hall, Investment Bank,
Shipping Facility, Football Stadium. (Complete list).
Properties in Vegas:
Properties in Moscow:
Properties in Dubai:
Industrial Facilities, Residence Hotel, Condo Highrise,
Tennis Center, Resort Complexes (opens at level 390), Oil Well
(opens at level 410), Office Complexes (opens at level).
Properties in Shanghai:
Historic Restaurant, Manufacturing Plant, Night Club,
Shopping Duplex (opens at level 550), Megacasino, (opens at
level 650).
Properties in Tokyo:
Jobs and Job Tiers (and heists)
There are many different types of jobs available in Mob Wars.
All of them require a specified amount of energy to complete
(and these values change as you play and advance). Some of
them require special weapons, a fixed number of mobsters, or any
other special item to complete. These requirements should be
fulfilled before the job can be carried out. Sometimes, there
are preparatory jobs, which award special items required to
finish the main job, although these seem to have been made
obsolete.
With all jobs, you gain an amount of money and experience. Some jobs,
however, can get you special weapons besides the experience and
money; some of these jobs have been listed above. These weapons
are extremely powerful and don’t require any upkeep. If you see
a percentage beside a weapon (for example 25% beside an image of
a race horse on the Extort a Businessman job in Chicago), then
you have a 25% chance of gaining a race horse each time you do
that job.
A recent update in Mob Wars has added a feature called job
tiers. A job has to be completed a fixed number of times to go
to the next tier for the same job. When you complete a tier, you
are awarded with a special item, which can be converted into
money in the Pawn Shop, a semi-new feature. As you go from tier to tier, the total
experience and money gained from the job also increase.Pawn
Shop items used to be actual items but are now simply playing
cards. Collect all suits of a given number, Jack, or Queen, and
you win something--mostly you win skill points, but you can also
win free powerful weapons, shields, and vehicles.
Job Heists introduced more recently introduce a true social
element to the game. Many Mob Wars players regret adding friends
to Facebook, adding these people to their Mob, and then deleting
them. With the addition of Job Heists, it makes sense to keep
the active Mob Wars players who are part of your Mob as Facebook
Friends. You and your mob members can choose to publish Help
Wanted requests that run through Facebook News Feeds. If you
successfully recruit friends, your job heist (which is basically
a Mob Wars job that is fulfilled over the course of time) runs
faster. If you are recruited, you win some very interesting
bonus items. If you have Mob members at advanced levels, these
bonus items can be especially useful to you.
At level 600, provided you have Shanghai open, you gain a new
job in Shanghai after the Traffic Counterfeit Goods job. The new
one is Assassinate Triad Dai-lo, and all that is required is one
Dragunov SVU. The Blackmail Government Officials and Traffic
Counterfeit Goods jobs require 5 Office Megaplices, which
doesn't open up until level 650, so there is a lot of waiting to
do jobs in Shanghai. I think it might be a glitch that the
makers of Mob Wars overlooked, although it's possible they are
building some anticipation, too. UPDATE: At level 630, both the
Office Megaplices and the next job on Shanghai are now open.
Conclusion
Mob Wars is a very popular and actively updated game. The
developer, Jason Gilbert, still works on new features for the
game. Some of the recent updates include AJAX-powered buttons.
The game continues to be addictive. There are players who spend
hours and hours in front of their computers just to play this
game. However you love it, you need to understand that this is
just a game, and games are for spare time only. Don’t make time
from your schedule to play Mob Wars, but play it when you have
time.
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