Download Yourself

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Facebook has given us a new feature.  We can now download all the information we ever put on Facebook. To get started, go to your Account Settings page.

Locate Download Your Information and click on learn more.

You will be directed to the Download Your Information page and you can read all about it from there.  Security is a big concern so you are warned that you will be asked for authentication to verify your identity.

If you decide to "Download Yourself", click on the green Download button.

Once your archive is ready to be downloaded, Facebook will send you an e-mail containing the link to begin the authentication process.  

The e-mail took about 20-30 minutes to receive.

Here is the part that sucks.  It specifically states on the Facebook Help Center Download Your Information Page that "Once you receive the email, you will have to re-enter your password and if you are using a public computer or one you do not use regularly, you may also have to solve a friend photo captcha or an SMS captcha via your mobile phone".

From the computer I ALWAYS use, I clicked on the link provided in the e-mail and verified my password.

I then got a Security Check warning and was told "To verify that you are the owner of this account, please identify the people tagged in the following photos".  I have 5,000 friends and most of them I don't know and could never match a picture to a name.  I'm not alone as this is the case with most Mafia Wars players.

Obviously I didn't dare click on "Start".  I went back to the email and hoped I would get a different type of security check.  Instead, I got a pink box stating "Sorry we are unable to verify your identity at this time.  Please try again later or contact support if you need further help.

At this point, I jumped ship and I doubt I go back.  I'm not going to risk losing my Facebook account because I can't prove my own identity.  I shouldn't have to worry about hackers getting all this information but that's not the case. Bossy Don of TopMafia.Info wrote about this feature when it was first implemented (1).  She was able to get her information and was never asked for a security check.  All she had to do was verify her password. She received an extensive html file that contained everything she ever posted on Facebook to include comments and inbox messages.

This seems like a problem to me.  Hackers need two things to gain access to your Facebook account.  Your password and your email.  If you aren't careful and take precautions (1), these things are not hard to get.  If a hacker gains access to your account, they have everything they need to download YOU.  If you buy Reward Points, your financial information will be in your Facebook account as well.  

Many thanks to Bossy Don for bringing the Download Yourself feature to my attention.

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law

New Player Updates

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I noticed today that the Player Updates have been revised.  This surprised me because we have a perfectly good Live Updates section on top of our game header.  I always assumed they would get rid of the Player Updates all together.
(click images to enlarge)

I reviewed the Beta Live Updates in detail (1).  Now it's time to check out the new Player Updates.  There are 3 sections. Top News, Recent News, and Combat.  The first thing I noticed is that everything listed in the new Player Updates is also in the Live Updates.  This is surely an information overload!

Top News
The Top News section is full of help requests for things like sending parts, wars, and jobs.  I decided to go down the list and help my mafia out.

Since Sheba needed some serious help to turn her dreams of an awesome Weapons Depot into a reality, I decided to hook her up.  I clicked on "Supply Some Parts" and was greeted with a message that "Sheba has received all the help allowed for today, but you can still help out by sending her a part she needs".

Of coarse I wanted to make sure Sheba got what she needed so I clicked on "Send More Materials" and was directed to the Free Gift Page.  I wasn't sure what she needed so I decided to send a new Mystery Shipment.

I was directed to my most active mafia members page and Sheba was no where to be found. If she made my Top News list, you would think she would be one of my active mafia members.

This wasn't a big deal because I could invest one more click and use the "My Mafia" button. Now I had to do some serious scrolling to find her.  S is a long ways down but I managed to find Sheba and was happy to be able to send her a gift.  What happened next was rather annoying. Yes, I had used all of my Facebook requests for the day and Sheba didn't get anything from me.

After the gifting fail, I decided to help my Top News friends in with their wars.  All 3 of wars in my top news were already over.

The last thing I saw was somebody needed help with a job. I'm good a helping with jobs so I went for it.  Nope, I was too late.  At least I got $1,000 and the satisfaction that Da Big Dog Coach already got the help that he needed.

Recent News
I would hardly call this stuff news.  We all need to take down the Bosses and most of us brag about it in the news feeds.  Reading about my mafia members winning a Boss Fight doesn't do much to help anybodies game.

Combat
This section sounds cool but it's just a list of who you fought as a capo for, who attacked you, and who declared war.  If I got anything decent for fighting as a Capo, I would be more interested.  I already learned my lesson about what happens when you try to help someone in a war.  Sure I like to see how attacked me but this bit of informations get diluted by the rest. The Beta Updates are much better because I can break it down and see everybody that attacked me.  After all, that's what we really care about.

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law

Halloween Loot Drops

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Many players have been commenting that the Halloween Loot drop rates have decreased. I know it was pretty easy to get 10 of each item when the event was first introduced. I used my energy account to determine how many of each item we could get and found that number to be 10. There are 4 loot items that we can get by doing jobs. I tested things out on my main account by doing an energy run on a low energy costing job in New York. I took screen shots of my inventory before and after the run.

Before NY Energy Run

NY Energy Run (2,878)

After NY Energy Run

Las Vegas Energy Run (3,534)

After Las Vegas Energy Run

You might get the items quicker by doing low cost energy jobs in NY. It seems like a waste of energy to acquire them in New York and I would wait until the event is almost over. I got less Halloween Loot items in Las Vegas, but I got valuable loot that increased my attack and defense scores by +74 and +33. All I got for doing the same thing in New York was a whole bunch of Butterfly Knifes.

Loot Item	# / 2878 Energy (NY)	# / 3534 Energy (LV)
Devil Costume	5	0
Zombie Costume	2	1
Ghost Costume	7	1
Pantomime Horse	6	1

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law

Switch Bookmarklet

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If you have tried to use the Switch bookmarklet to get the Facebook profile of one of your mafia members, you will find it's not working. It works just fine to go from a Facebook profile to a Mafia Wars profile but not the other way around. Switch works both ways with no problems on players who are not in your mafia.

The Switch bookmarklet can be found on the The Spockholm Mafia Tools Stable Page.  I asked Pistol Pete what was going on and he told me that Zynga changed some things and they would be looking into it some more. It currently will work on the Declare War Page. Arch-Angel Nemesis figured out a work around for the time being.

1. From anywhere in the game, right click over a friends Mafia Wars name and then click on Open link in new window.  In this example, I will use an initiator from a random Social Mission.

2. In the new window that opens, click on the Switch bookmarklet once to unframe the page.

3.  Once the game is unframed in your new window, find the Mafia Wars profile you want to switch, click on the Switch bookmarklet again and the Facebook profile of your mafia member will appear.

Mission Tip

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Earlier today I was going through my unfinished missions and decided to remove myself from the ones that looked like they were going nowhere. When I used the Mission Owner bookmarklet, I got the following error message.

Arun of Outpost Mafia Tools said that Zynga broke their remove functionality from the missions.  Removing yourself from dead beat missions is no longer an option.  Now the only ways to clear a missions off the mission page is to wait until the mission expires or contact the mission initiator and ask him or her to request more help from their mafia.  Pistol Pete of Spockholm Mafia Tools showed me a quick way to do this. If you hover your mouse over the mission initiators name, their stats will slide out and there is "Send Message" button.  Use this to generate a Facebook message that will post to your mafia members wall.

Italy Loot Drop Rates

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Bossy Don and I have been working on loot drop rates. We are planning on comparing the Bronze and Ruby levels but it looks like the drop rates have decreased during the time frame between our runs.  Property Upgrade Parts are still not dropping in Italy during fights and the bad news here is drop rates have dramatically decreased with jobs.  Here is a 1,000 Job run I performed on October 20th.  There are only 2 loot items that drop which have better stats than Las Vegas loot (the Meadow Viper and the Corpo Armatura) so I only calculated the drop rates for those items and the property Upgrade Parts. There are no Armor Parts in the first run because they were not dropping at the time.

October 20th 

(137,000 Energy)

October 28th

(665,137 Energy)

I used 4 times the energy and got less Upgrade Parts. The loot item drops are not good at all.  Italy just opened so we can only hope that the rates will get better. If not, it's going to take a very long time to get 501 of anything! New and better loot will probably be introduced before you even get close.

Mystery Shipment

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Check your Free Gift page and you will notice a new gift called a Mystery Shipment.  I don't care for anything that's a mystery in Mafia Wars but I had to check it out and it's something most of us can use.

When you send it to your mafia members, it states that they are "guaranteed to give your friends a construction part they need for one of their buildings".  If they gift you back, you should get double the parts.

I decided to test this out and I sent one to myself from my energy account.

When I opened it from my Facebook request page, I got a Wine Barrel.

And from my Mafia Wars Message Center my Mystery Shipment contained an item called a DJ. I'm not familiar with this so I did some investigating.
(click image to enlarge)

There was nothing about a DJ on the Mafia Wars Wiki. It has to be related to a property so all I could think of is a potential new property when Regions 6-8 are released.  Here is the item in my inventory.

Bossy Don of TopMafia told me to check the Community News section of my Mafia Wars game.  Sure enough, there is a property on the image that hasn't been released yet.  Whatever this property is will most likely need a DJ to build and upgrade.
(image from my Mafia Wars Community News Section)

Back to the Mystery Shipment.  I sent one back to my energy account and got 2X the loot back. I haven't upgraded the Armory of my energy account so the two vices I received were something I needed.  So far the Mystery Shipment delivers as promised. I wonder what the players who have fully upgraded all of their properties will receive?  I know, more DJ's!

The bad news is there is a cap on how many Mystery Shipments you can accept. The one below was my forth. We all know Zynga has trouble counting sometimes so I'm not exactly sure what the daily limit is.  If you accept Mystery Shipments after you have reached the threshold, they will turn into Mystery Bags.

Thanks to Mike Nestor and Bossy Don for helping out with this one.