1 Free Skill Point

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familyrant Today we get 1 Skill Point to use anyway we want.  I think I'll add mine to my attack skills.  To get yours, go to the Mafia Wars Fan Page or click the link below.

http://zyn.ga/2Aa

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

Italy Upgrade Parts

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A few days ago, Zynga removed some important items off of the Free Gift page. I told you how to generate your own links and I received quite a few e-mails with current gifting codes and scripts that will do the steps for you (1).  Team Spockholm has since updated the Link-a-Nator and made a few changes.

The items with asterisks next to them are not on the Free Gift page and as written on the Link-a-Nator "are manually added and could stop working at any time".  These items are in the red boxes and I highlighted the items on the Free Gift page in purple since Team Spockholm took all the other colors.

They weren't messing around with the phrase at any time because within hours of the update, Zynga changed the gift codes and most of these items produce Mystery Bags (or as Simy0 likes to call them, Misery Bags).

From this we can conclude that Zynga does not want us to have gifts that are not on the Free Gift page.  It's been almost impossible to collect enough Italy property upgrade parts because of all the gifting events that have been going on over the past few months.  According to the Mafia Wars Wiki Italy Page, you need a total of 432 of each part to fully upgrade your Italy Village.  That's 1,728 parts total!

(images from the Mafia Wars Wiki)

Now I'm sure all the Bossy Don's have had their Villages fully upgraded since day one, but what are the rest of us suppose to do to get these parts? One of my readers sent me a Customer Support transcript (sorry I can't find it) in which they were told this wasn't a big deal because they could get them from doing jobs and accepting Mystery Shipments.  I thought it would be interesting to explore the various ways we can get Italy upgrade parts without using the free gift system and demonstrate how the current methods will make upgrading our properties before we die (or quit playing) a challenge.

Italy Jobs
All Italy property upgrade parts do drop when doing jobs in Italy.  Unlike all the other property upgrade parts, they are specific to one destination and drop no where else.  They also do NOT drop while fighting.  You probably have figured out by now that the drop rates suck and this was something intentional as stated by Al Catraz on the Zynga Forum Boards.

I wanted to see if the drop rates increased since they took upgrade parts off the Free Gift page. The simple is answer is they still suck.  Here is a 5,000 job run in Italy in which 685,000 energy was spent.

Now there are cheaper jobs and if I was on the bronze level, it would have taken less energy to do the same amount of jobs.  Here is a smaller run on a different energy account with the same job but on the Bronze level. In this example, 26,108 energy was used and 16 upgrade parts dropped.  These cost 1,631 energy each.  Moral of the story is you will still have to spend a lot of energy but if you stayed on the Bronze level, it will be cheaper to get these parts.  The drop rate is 3.7% and is the same as the Ruby level when you calculate per job instead of by the energy used.

I wanted to see how many parts I could get on my main account where I have a more reasonable amount of energy.  I didn't follow my own advice and stay on the Bronze level so I found the job that would be the cheapest which was in Region 1.  With my energy full, I did this job and got 7 upgrade parts.  The drop rate was 3.5% and I spent about 462 energy per part.  In conclusion, farming Italy upgrade parts from your main account is not going to get you fully upgraded very fast (unless you have a boat load of energy).

Mystery Shipments
Sending and accepting Mystery Shipments sounds like a reasonable solution until you realize that you can only accept 5 of them a day.  You are not guaranteed to get Italy parts and usually you don't.  I got lucky here but usually you get something from one of the other destinations or an item you can easily make while doing jobs.

Mike Nestor also took some screen shots of his Mystery Shipment items.

After you open up 5 of these, you get one of those Misery Bags!  I can definitely say that Mystery Shipments are not going to help upgrade your Village very quickly.

Asking Your Mafia
Every 24 hours, you can spam the news feeds and ask you mafia members to send you on of the parts you need.  The maximum number of parts you can get this way is 5.  You also need to remember to do this once a day.  I always forget because there are too many other things to remember,

The Daily Chance
The good news was that Zynga made an improvement on the rewards we get from the Daily Chance but the bad news as far as upgrading your Village is concerned is you won't get many Italy upgrade parts.  The Daily Chance is only once a week and the other property upgrade parts are also rewarded.

If you're like me and haven't finished upgrading your Italy Village, all you can do now is hope that once all these silly event gifts are removed from the Free Gift page that Italy upgrade parts will be re-added.  An even better idea would be for Zynga to finally make them giftable so we can trade with out mafia members.  All the others property parts are so why not these?

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

1 Free Defense Point

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You know the drill and I can't make these posts any more exciting. I think next year I'll keep them on the discussion board of my fan site. One by one, these points are adding up.  I would rather have a lump sum option like in the lottery but Zynga likes us to click! Today you get a Defense Point. Click the link below or visit the Mafia Wars Fan Page.

http://zyn.ga/2AZ

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

Talk & Play With Talkita

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Nik Gandhy has created a Google Chrome Extension called Talkita. What's really cool about it is you can chat with your friends in a move-able and re-sizable window that will stay open as you play Mafia Wars or any other web based game. The chat room is public and specific to whatever website you are visiting so you won't have to worry about not having enough friends. Players can chat with each other, get advice and share links and other important information.

Mafia Wars

CityVille

If you want to check it out go to http://talkita.com/.  From this page, you can download the Chrome Extension  or just drag the bookmark to your toolbar so you can use it in other browser.

Talkita Google Chrome Extension

1.  Go to http://talkita.com/ and click on the Google Chrome icon.

2.  Click on the Install button located in the lower right hand corner.

3.  Once installation is complete, you will now see the Talkita icon in the upper right corner of your browser and the Talkita Chat Badge will appear to the far right of what ever page you are on (this can be turned off).

4.  Use the Talkita icon to adjust the settings.  You can see Talkita is available in many different languages.

5. Log in by clicking on "Login with Facebook".

The first time you do this you will need to give Talkita.com permission to access your basic profile information.  This is the same thing we need to do with all applications.

6.  Go to whatever website you want and click on the Talkita badge and the Chat box will appear.

7.  Start chatting with all the other Talkita users who are on the same website as you.

Talkita Bookmark

1.  From the Talkita main page, click drag and drop the Talkita Chat bookmarklet to your toolbar.

2.  Go to the website you want to chat on.

3.  Click on the Talkita Chat bookmarklet now located in your bookmark toolbar and the chat window will appear.

The chat window can be placed anywhere on the page that you want. Hover the mouse over the top portion of the chat window and wait for the crossbars to appear.  Then move it to where you want it to be.

You can also make it smaller or bigger by hovering the mouse over the edges, wait for and double arrow to appear and move it in or out to adjust the size.

Mike Nestor and I tried this chat box out on other sites and it worked just great.  Here we are chatting on the informantpodcast.com.

And here we are on my blog. You will notice that chatting on Blogspot or Facebook will not be specific to the page so you will have people from any page on those sites.

If you decide you don't want to use Talkita anymore or want to temporarily turn it off, it's very easy to do.  Simply click on the little chrome wrench in the upper right corner of your browser and select Tools and then Extensions.

Click on Uninstall to remove or Disable to turn off.

Nik explains in the Chrome Web Store that Talkita is in the Beta phase and will evolve based on your feedback.  Try it out and let him know what you think.


As this is a Beta you can probably guess we have many new features (and fixes) coming along. Please give us a try and let us know what you like and don't like so we can make this a product you love and want to tell your friends about.
Upcoming Features:
- **** Login from Google / Twitter / Talkita ****
- Sidebar dock
- Firefox / IE Integration
- You tell us!

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