Family Progression: Strategy

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The Family Progression feature has been out for 3 days now. Not all Families have it but Zynga says they will be "rolling it out to the rest as soon as we can". Hopefully this won't be as slow as the rolls we saw with the Crack The Safe and the new Fight Module. The feature is given to Families and not to individual accounts. If a Family has the feature and you are a member, then you will have it. If you leave a Family that doesn't have it and join one that does, then you will have it as well.  Nobody but Zynga likes a slow roll. I heard they are changing their logo and found this in their servers.

The first step to formulating a strategy for your Family and yourself is understanding the components of the Family Progress feature. I've reviewed the basics here. Lets take a closer look at the bonuses as they apply towards your Families progress. There are 4 categories of game activities and each one has 3 levels of mastery. To master each category on each level, you must do the following every 24 hours.

Game Activity	Progress Unit	Bronze	Silver	Gold	Total
Ices	Ices	5	20	125	150
Jobs	Job Exp Points	100	900	9,000	10,000
Property	Property  Exp Points	5	15	40	60
Helper	Helper Exp Points	5	20	75	100

Here are the maximum individual and Family experience payouts per day. There are 4 categories with three levels so there are 12 opportunities a day to collect your bonuses.  Individual experience bonuses are calculated as a percentage of your level. Like with regular Missions, the experience payouts will vary between accounts. Family experience doesn't apply to your individual account. It only serves as a means to move your Family progression bar towards the next level. There are a total of 10 levels and the amount of experience needed to move up each level increases exponentially. Less experience is required to get from level 1 to level 2 than from level 9 to 10. The exact number of Family experience points needed for each level is not known yet but I'm working on finding out this information. Your individual experience bonuses are based on a percentage of your level. For example, my level is 2501 and I get 312 exp on the Bronze level. This is 12.5% of my level.

	Bronze	Silver	Gold	Combined	Total Exp Per 24 hours
Individual Payout (Exp Points)	12.5%  of  Level	62.5%  of  Level	125%  of  Level	200%  of  Level	800%  of  Level
Family Payout (Family Exp )	100	200	300	600	2,400

The breakdown of the point system for each category and the best way to master each one is as follows.

Ices 

The Ices category is self explanatory. We need to get 1,000 ices per week for the Ice Seasons event so mastering this category shouldn't take any additional effort on your part. You just have to make sure you get a total of 150 ices per day.

Jobs

Do any job you want and the experience payout will apply towards the Job category. To spend the least amount of energy as possible, look for jobs that have higher experience/energy ratios. I do the District 8 Brazil job "Bribe a Taubate Prison Worker" as it has the best ratio. Each jobs costs 648 energy and pays out 1,430 experience. To master the Jobs category on the Gold Level, I need to do this job 7 times and I'm done for the day (less if I get a Top Mafia bonus).

Properties

The Properties category has caused some confusion. It's based on a point system and requires crafting. For each item you craft, your points are based on the level of the property the item was crafted from. You don't get any experience points for upgrading properties to include the non-buildable ones.

Property Level	Property Exp Points
1	1
2	2
3	3
4	4
5	5
6	6
7	7
8	8
9	9
10	10
11	11
12	12
13	13
14	14
15	15

I like this requirement because I'm pretty lazy about crafting items from my properties. This is something I should be doing everyday because of the skill points but I often put it off. All of my buildable properties are at level 15 so I get 15 points for each item I craft. All I need to do to master this category on the gold level is craft one item per property. If you use Reward Points to speed up your crafting timer, only 4 builds per day will apply to the Family Progression feature. The crafting timers are on a 18 hour timer and the Family Progression timer is 24 hours. To ensure you get credit towards Family experience, it's important to make sure you don't craft twice in a 24 hour period.

When the 24 hour timer resets, your progress bar is empty and you need 5, 15 and 40 points to master each level.

Chop Shop

Weapons Depot

Armory

Private Zoo

Helper

The Helper category is also based on a point system. There are 11 different things you can do to get points. You need a total of 100 points for gold mastery. 

Task	Helper Points
Recruit a New Player	10
Give Operation Help	4
Declare a War	3
Give War Help	2
Give Mission Help	2
Accept Crew Help	2
Activate Crew	1
Accept Free Gift	1
Give Job Help	1
Give Crime Spree Help	1
Spin a Friends Vegas Slots	1

I found the easiest and fastest way to get 100 points is to accept 100 gifts. This is something I don't usually do everyday so now there is more incentive. An added bonus is I can stock up on my Special Parts and Exotic Animal Feeds for crafting my properties. If I want a specific type of gift, I run the Get-a-Nator by Team Spockholm and throw the links into the Bagman-Muggar.

If I'm in a hurry and just want the gifts for the helper points, I use JGrabAllGifts.

When I have a lot of requests in my ZMC, I use the ZMC Agent.

Individual and Family experience bonuses do not apply until you click on the "Collect" button located on the Mission Bar. If you blew through an objective and mastered it on gold before you collected your Bronze or Silver bonuses, there is no need to panic or stop tasks for the sole purpose of collecting. One thing Zynga did good here is they give us the ability to control when we collect. In the example below, I got 150 ices before I collected anything. When I went to my Family Mission Page, the "Collect" button was waiting. Once I clicked on it, I got the Bronze level reward and then a second "Collect" button appeared for the Silver reward and then a third for the gold. It's best to collect these experience bonuses when they will help you level. There is no rush as long as the timer isn't close to resetting. If the timer resets and you don't collect, you will lose the bonus and you have to complete the tasks all over again.

To demonstrate and verify that the experience bonus works and delivers as stated, I took images of my experience prior to collecting each bonus.

Family experience doesn't apply to your individual account. It only serves as a means to move your Family progression bar towards the next level. There are a total of 10 levels and the amount of experience needed to move up each level increases exponentially. Less experience is required to get from level 1 to level 2 than from level 9 to 10. The exact number of Family experience points needed for each level is not known yet but I'm working on finding out this information. There are two places to check on your Families progress. The Home Page and the Family Page. Once your Family masters a level, all progress bars reset to 0% and new Family experience applies to the next level.

Home Page

Family Page

The perks for the Family apply to your individual account but they stay in the Family. I joined the {ASS} Family with my energy account. As soon as I sucessfully joined, I got their latest reward popup. The account was not a member of the Family when perks 1-3 were rewarded

The account was not a member of the Family when perks 1-3 were rewarded but I verified that they all applied to the account. You can see the Energy Pack maximum on this account was raised to 6 due to the Ambitious I Perk was in effect.

I then removed the account from the Family and lost the perks. If you join a Family for the sole purpose of gaining the benefits of the perks, don't plan on flying solo or going back to your old Family because you will lose them.

This will be cause for concern down the road as there are quite a few perks that one wouldn't want to lose. It would suck for a player to get kicked out of a Family after he or she worked hard to help their Family earn the perks. This also gives players other than yourself some control over your character. Be selective when you join a Family as any admin can kick you out and the perks will be removed from your account.

Level	Perk	Description
1	Ambitious I	-Restore energy 5% faster -Store +1 energy pack (6 total)
2	Well Connected	-Get 4 hired guns per request for 501 Mafia -+500 Mafia ATT/+500 DEF -10% less damage in losses
3	Industrious	-Upgrade faster with one less construction part of each type needed -5% chance to loot 2X parts.
4	Grudge Holder	-Add 10 more players to your Family Rivals list -Get extra loot from helping in Operations
5	Ambitious II	-Restore energy 10% faster -Store +1 energy pack (7 total)
6	Overkill	-Do more damage from Power attacks -Get +500 Mafia ATT/+500 DEF -20% less damage in losses
7	Craftsman	-10% chance to loot 2X Property parts.
8	Loot and Pillage	-Get extra loot when you help in Wars -Add 10 more players to Family Rivals list
9	Ambitious III	-Restore energy 15% faster -Store +1 energy pack (8 total)
10	Scrapper	-Restore stamina 10% faster -Cut timer by 2 hours to Declare War every 6 hours -Get +500 Mafia ATT/+500 DEF

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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