Building Your Holdout

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I've reviewed the various aspects of the Brazil Holdout several times on this blog (1),(2),(3),(4),(5). Now is a good time to review how to build it and where to get the parts. The concept of the Holdout is the same as the Las Vegas Casino and the Italy Villa. Unlock a property by mastering a job, collect upgrade parts and build each property ten levels. The only difference in Brazil is that 3 of the upgrade parts are items from New York and Las Vegas and they are gifable. Two of the items required to upgrade your Hold Out are new and not very easy to get. Construction Workers and Brazilian Timbers aren't giftable, aren't available as free gifts and the drop rates to acquire them through game play are ridiculous.

According to the Mafia Wars Wiki Brazil Holdout Page, you will need a total of 450 Construction Workers and 315 Brazilian Timbers to fully upgrade all 5 of the properties.
(image from the Mafia Wars Wiki)

Here is what your properties will look like as you build them. To find out exactly what you will need to build each one and what the pay outs are along the way, click in the links above each set of images and you will be directed to the appropriate Mafia Wars Wiki Page.
(images from the Mafia Wars Wiki)

Headquarters

Workshop

Black Market

Refinery

Barracks

So how do you get the 1,710 parts needed to have a fully upgraded Holdout? Well 945 of them are easy. Check your inventory and you probably already have enough Reinforced Steel, Cement Blocks and Power Tools. If you don't, ask your mafia. There are plenty of these to go around.

This leaves 765 parts left. The 4 options to acquire Construction Workers and Brazilian Timbers are to fight, do jobs, ask your mafia or buy them from the Marketplace for 2 Reward Points each.  Depending on your stamina pool, fighting is probably the most practical way. Those who have fully upgraded got most of their parts through fighting. It's impossible to define a drop rate as Eike demonstrated on this blog, drop rates for fighting are purely random (1). Upgrade parts drop in all destinations while fighting. If you are in Brazil and you attack someone who is also in Brazil then you will get 5 parts instead of 1, however you use 5 stamina for the attack. You can see here I only got 5 Brazilian Timbers after blowing through 24,470 stamina with a 99% win rate.

In New York, I got 7 parts and only spent 6,868 stamina with the same win ratio. I also got a lot more Victory Coins.  I've had better runs in Brazil so it's hard to say if one destination is better than another. Like Eike says, it's random so don't sweat it and fight where you normally would fight.

Construction Workers and Brazilian Timbers also drop when doing jobs in Brazil, Italy and New York. So far they aren't dropping in Las Vegas or Bangkok. I question if they are suppose to drop in other destinations besides Brazil. When they drop in Italy it says they are to be used to upgrade the Armory and when they drop in New York it says they are for the Chop Shop.

Brazil

Italy

New York

You can see from the drop rates below that it will cost a lot of energy to acquire just a few parts. You will spend a lot less energy per part farming in New York. I wouldn't even attempt to get the majority of your parts from doing Brazil jobs.

Brazil

Italy

New York

You are allowed to request parts from our mafia once every 24 hours. Simply go to any property and select upgrade. 

Hover your mouse over the part you want, click on "Ask Friends" and a post will be generated for you to spam the news feeds.  You can only ask for one of the 5 upgrade parts every 24 hours.

I tested it out and I got a total of 5 parts when I requested them. It would be possible to upgrade your Holdout through this method alone but it would take over 5 months providing you ask everyday right at the 24 hour mark. My account seems to drop more Brazilian Timbers than Construction Workers so I always ask for Construction Workers. Plus you will need 135 more Construction Workers than Brazilian Timbers.

Since these parts are not easy to get, it's best to upgrade your properties in order of usefulness. The Refinery pays out in Energy and the Barracks Stamina. Depending on your character type, either of these should be upgrade first. The Headquarters will payout in Brazil Cash and possibly a Precious Gem collection item so I chose to work on that one third.

The Black Market allows you to craft one loot item every 23 hours. There are no special abilities associated with these items so all you're getting is the stat of the the item. Only the Antler Cannon (44/75) is better than anything in the top 8 loot items. It would take you well over a year to get 501 of them.  By then, the stats will be worthless. I would upgrade this property once the three above are fully upgraded. 

(item images from the Mafia Wars Wiki)

You can always use Reward Points to speed up the timer but without the benefit of adding skill points to your character, this would be a waste of money in the long run.

Once you master all of the destinations, the Workshop is by far the the most useless property of the Holdout. Even if you haven't mastered everything, one to six consumable items (depending on your level) per18 hours isn't going to help you very much. It's best to upgrade this property last.

(loot item images from the Mafia Wars Wiki)

Here is something Zynga didn't think through very well. If you want to speed up your Workshop timer so you can buy 1-6 more consumable items, it will cost 12 Reward Points. If you're going to spend Reward Points for consumables, you would be much smarter to go to the Marketplace and buy TWO for only one Reward Point. If you're upgraded to level 10, you can make 6 but it's still much cheaper to get them in the Marketplace. For 12 Reward Points, you could buy 24 consumable items.

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