Mafia Wars On Facebook – Tips, Tricks & Cheat Codes

Own a Facebook account? If you do, then I’m sure you’ve heard of Mafia Wars. Created by Zynga, the game has over 25 million monthly active users and is one of The Top Five Idle Time Facebook Games.
As a frequent MW player, I often come across people who have ridiculous stats on their accounts (e.g. 1 quadrillion dollars and on level 600+). When I see stats like that I ask, “How are these people doing this?” Surely they couldn’t be playing the game 24 hours a day, at least not all of them anyway. But if they aren’t playing non-stop then how are they doing so well? It’s simple, they cheat.

In this article, I will be discussing some of the Facebook Mafia Wars tips, tricks, and cheats that the top players use to dominate Mafia Wars. You can use these methods to level up quickly, build up your stats, and in some cases put your account on autopilot.
Note: MakeUseOf does not condone cheating and is not responsible if (for some reason) Zynga decides to ban your account. As far as I know, there are no legitimate “cheat codes” for Mafia Wars, so some of those provided are—for lack of a better word—hacks. In my opinion, as long as you aren’t greedy you are at low risk.

General Facebook Mafia Wars Tips & Strategies

First, before playing any game I feel it is pertinent to study up and become familiar with the game’s settings, gameplay, and terminology. In Mafia Wars’ case, there exists a wiki.
The Mafia Wars Wiki is a large site consisting of all the knowledge one could wish to gain in MW. Quite simply, if it isn’t listed in the wiki, it probably doesn’t exist in the game.

Use the wiki to learn what the strongest weapons are, where to find them, what you need to complete certain jobs, etc.

Grow Your Mafia

Mafia Wars currently limits your mafia to a maximum of 500. In the game, the more members you have the easier it is to win fights, so it is important that you grow your mafia. Since your mafia is mostly made up of your Facebook friends, it’s best to try to get more of them to participate. If not, you can always find people to add or you can purchase extra mafia members with your reward points.

Energy Is Key

One stat you want to make sure to upgrade more than anything else is Energy. The more Energy you have the more jobs you can complete. The more jobs you can complete the faster you will gain Experience (Exp). The faster you gain Experience the quicker you can level up.

Fight Somebody

To fight people you need Stamina. Stamina is probably the second most important stat to level up, at least in the beginning. While most jobs require several Energy to complete, you only need 1 Stamina to fight somebody. After you use up all of your Energy and are waiting for it to refill you may as well fight to gain Exp. You can also find some cool items and weapons this way.

When fighting, however, you are more likely to get attacked back in retaliation or even killed, so when you aren’t leveling up Energy you should be increasing your Stamina, Health, Attack, and Defense sparingly.

Prey On The Weak

Just like in real life, when fighting, it is easiest to fight somebody way weaker than you. After all, you are using a Stamina to fight, so why risk losing? The easiest way to accomplish this is to fight someone whose mafia size is half that of yours. For example, my mafia size is currently 48, so I stick to fighting people with a mafia size of 20 or less. I win 99% of my fights this way.

If you level up your Attack more often you don’t need to follow this technique, but why would you be doing that when I already told you Energy is the way to go?

Take Your Money To The Bank

When you’re first starting out in Mafia Wars money is crucial. I keep in the habit of depositing my money every time I have more than $50,000. I do this because when you get attacked by somebody you can lose up to $65,000 each time they win a fight against you. Keeping your on-hand cash to a minimum helps keep robbery to a minimum.

Control MW Like A Boss

Here comes the fun stuff—the not-so-general tips and tricks. If you want to put the above advice into motion effectively (and mostly automatically) then you can check out userscripts.
Note: In order to use scripts from userscripts.org you must have Greasemonkey installed. Greasemonkey is an add-on for Firefox and can be found here.

Mafia Wars Autoplayer

The infamous Mafia Wars Autoplayer (MWAP) has been installed over 485,000 times and is highly effective at automating your gameplay.
Once installed, you will see MWAP (and the version number) at the top right of your MW screen, along with Pause/Resume, Settings, and Log buttons. On the Settings screen there are a lot of options for you to toy around with. Here are some tips for optimizing your settings:

Settings: Autostat Tab

Check the box to enable auto-stat. Now this page might look a bit confusing, but it’s really quite simple. The way I use it is whatever I want to upgrade (like Energy) I set that field to a number other than zero (e.g. Energy = 5 x Level + 0). This will make the MWAP use skill points automatically to upgrade the areas you choose.

You can play around with the ratios to get everything perfect if you like, but I find this method easiest because I generally change the settings manually every day or so anyway. Most of the time I just leave it on Energy.

Settings: Energy Tab

Check the box at the top that says ‘Spend energy to perform any combination of jobs’. Also check ‘Optimize at end level’. Then set your ‘Master tier’ to whatever tier you are currently working on. MWAP will use your Energy to do jobs in the selected tier.

I like to set my tier to one that is higher than what I am currently working on. The jobs in the upper tiers give you more Exp upon completion, allowing you to level up more quickly. When MWAP is paused I use an Energy Pack and complete the lower tiers I was working on.

Settings: Stamina Tab

Check the box ‘Spend stamina to fight random opponents’. Set ‘Maximum level’ to 2 and check ‘Add my level’. This means you won’t fight anyone that is more than 2 levels ahead of you (you can’t in most versions of the game anyway).
Also check the ‘Add my mafia size’ box and list a negative number for ‘Maximum mafia’. In my case I have 48 mafia so I set the box to -28. That way MWAP will only fight those that have 1-20 mafia members (see Prey on the Weak section above).

Update MWAP

It is very important that you check for updates to MWAP frequently as there is usually at least one update every day. If you fail to update the script, chances are it will not work after a little while.

Conclusion

If you weren’t a Mafia Wars expert before reading this post I suspect you will be one quite soon. One of the things that make a game like MW so fun is that it’s a numbers game, and when you start to see high numbers you feel as though you have accomplished a great deal because you know how long it took to get to that point. Use these tips and you will achieve your goals in the game.
Did I forget to mention any great tips, tricks, or cheats? If you have any awesome secrets to share, along with your thoughts, ideas, praises, etc. please leave a comment below!