Back Alley Business Walk Through

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The new Secret District is called Back Alley Business, Brazil. From the title, I don't need to tell you what destination it's in. It will be available for a total of two weeks and the timer will expire on January 16th at 5:00 PM (Pacific Time).

There are several ways to get to Back Alley Business. Use the Home Page Banner, Brazil Job Page or the Travel Bar.

The Job Page image will change as you progress through the 4 levels of mastery.

Bronze

Silver

Gold

Ruby

There are a total of 9 jobs. The job names, requirements and payouts for each level are shown below. Thanks to Tom Hughes for the screen shots below.
(click images to enlarge)

Bronze

Silver

Gold

Ruby

The experience/energy ratios are surprisingly decent. On the Gold and Ruby Levels the second job "Discover The Local Ringleaders" has the best ratio of 2.22.

Job	Mastery	Bronze	Silver	Gold	Ruby
1*	8%	2.00	2.07	2.13	2.13
2	9%	2.08	2.15	2.22	2.22
3	8%	1.81	1.88	1.94	1.94
4**	7%	2.08	2.15	2.22	2.22
5	7%	1.93	2.00	2.06	2.06
6*	5%	2.06	2.13	2.20	2.20
7**	6%	2.00	2.07	2.13	2.13
8	8%	2.00	2.07	2.13	2.13
9*	9%	1.90	1.97	2.03	2.03

*1 Rifle Case required per job
**BRL$2,100 required per job

The consumable item needed for Back Alley Business is the Rifle Case.

You will need one for each job click. If you run out, Zynga will let you know that you can buy them at the cost of 2 for 1 Reward Point. There are much cheaper ways to get them so click on the X.

You can farm Rifle Cases by doing the 5th job "Make New Deals With Gun-Runners". It's annoying that the job to make consumables comes after a job that requires them.  If you prefer this method over free gifts, farm them early. The job cost is 810 on the Ruby Level and only 135 on Bronze. For details on the best strategy to farm and use consumables, go here.

The drop rate for Rifle Cases is no where near 100%. I did 1,000 jobs and only got 477 of them.

The easiest and cheapest way to get a Rifle Case is to use the free gift system.

Use the link below to go directly to the send page.

http://spockon.me/MWLLRifleCase

The fastest way to get a lot of Rifle Cases is to send many requests to your mafia and wait for the return gifts to come rolling into your ZMC. There is no limit of how many we can accept other than the free gift limit of 250 a day. Use the Gift Blaster by Team Spockholm to make the process easy.

Rifle Cases are required for three of the nine jobs (Job #1, #6 and #9).

To figure out how many Rifle Cases will be needed to fully master the district, use the mastery percentage for the three jobs shown above and divide the number into 100, round up, multiply by 4 and add the totals together. Assuming you don't use any Brazil Crew Bonuses, 2x Mastery Boosts or ask your mafia for help, it will take 180 Rifle Cases to complete all jobs.

Job	Mastery	Rifle Case/Level	Total
1	8%	13	52
6	5%	20	80
9	9%	12	48
Grand Total			180

Two of the jobs (Job #4 and #7) require 2,100 Real per click. You will need to spend a total of  BRL$268,800 (assuming you don't use any bonuses, boosts or request help).

The equipment and cost per item needed to complete the jobs in Back Alley Business are shown below. The cost assumes that you own a Ruby Level Abelha Helicopter which is the mastery item for District 4 in Brazil. The Abelha Helicopter adds a discount to City Store items, if you don't own one, your costs will be higher. If you've already mastered Brazil and completed the other Secret Districts, you won't need to buy any new job equipment because you will already have the items in your inventory. Players who are just starting out or have just got to Brazil may have problems getting enough Brazil Real to buy all of the items. The total cost is over 11 million Real.

Job Equipment Items

Total Cost = $BRL11,481,300

26/BRL$10,800	16/BRL$34,200	26/BRL$34,200	30/BRL$36,900	45/BRL$44,100
15/BRL$33,300	23/BRL$44,100	12/BRL$34,200
22/BRL$2,700	30/BRL$11,700	30/BRL$33,300
27/BRL$900	30/BRL$11,700	23/BRL$36,000	25/BRL$40,500	26/BRL$43,200

There are 4 loot items that randomly drop from all jobs in the district. The stats of the first three items aren't going to help many but players who didn't max out on Standing Jet Skies will be happy to see there is another defense vehicle with a score of 105.

Block Buster

Runner Vest
 Alley Cat Corner Car

These loot items drop randomly in all of the jobs. If you are going to farm them, it's best to stay on the Bronze Level and do the job "Discover The Local Ringleaders". This job cost 108 energy, doesn't require Real or consumables and offers an experience/energy ratio of 2.08.

You many not need the first three items shown above but it's in your best interest to acquire 50 of them because you will gain a bonus of 15 skill points.

You will spend much less energy on the Bronze Level than you will the Ruby to get these item. Comparing the 1,000 job run shown above to the same run on the Ruby Level, you can see the energy costs were much greater on the Ruby Level. You will spend approximately 2,500 energy for each item on the Bronze Level and 9,208 on Ruby. You can also see that the Corner Car which isn't included on the tracker has a much lower drop rate.

You can purchase these items for 35 Reward Points each but this would be one of the stupidest things you could do. An energy refill costs 10 Reward Points and most likely you would get more than one. I don't know what Zynga is thinking by charging this price. I purchased one to see what would happen and there was no verification window. My number just went up by 1 so be careful not to click on these buttons. You won't even get a tick mark on your Marketplace Promotion meter.

You won't even get a tick mark on your Marketplace Promotion meter. Now that's some serious bullshit!

If you want to buy loot in the Marketplace, there are much better items for the same cost. In the example above, I got one attack weapon with stats of 97/60 for 35 Reward Points. I could have spent the same amount and got a better attack weapon with stats of 158/95. That is quite a difference.

I explained the drop down loot tracker which can be found on top of the job page image in detail here. It's a busy looking thing but it's nice to see how many loot items and consumables you have in one glance. The only chances to the tracker I noticed are the 2X loot boosts cost 3 Reward Points instead of 2. You can buy Rifle Cases directly from this page but they fail to tell you that they cost 2 for 1 Reward Point. If you do buy them from here (don't be foolish!), you will get 2.

2X Loot Boosts are also outlined in the post referenced above. We can get 5 from each request we make. There isn't a timer on the request but it appears you can ask for them every 30 minutes. You can also collect 30 a day from the news feeds.

If you really want to stock pile 2X Loot Boosts, you can add them to your wishlist. They will carry over to the next Secret District if you don't use them all.

If a 2X Loot Boost is used at the same time as your Lockpick Brazil Crew Bonus is activated you will get 4 items. There will only be one green border but if you check your tracker you will have 4 additional items.

When you fully master each level, you get a mastery item called the Street Warrior. Too bad he can't ride my Street Blade because I don't have one! The stats start off as 60/125 on the Bronze Level and improve to 181/82 for the Ruby Level. According to Vla, we will need to spend a total of 196,841 energy (minus any Top Mafia Bonuses, Brazil Crew bonuses, 2X Mastery Boosts or job help) to fully master the district. 

Once you have mastered this district on the Ruby Level you can go back and do jobs. Unlike the City of Traverse, it won't disappear when you are finished. You might want to stay on the Gold Level until the last day or so. The Ruby Level bug that was present in the Lexington Hotel is also present here. When you click on any job, you won't see anything happen. You do get the payouts but you won't see it happening. I made two posts about this bug on December 15th and 19th (1), (2) and discussed it in the walk through. When I post about a glitch that is in the favor to the players, it's fixed within hours.

Zynga is requesting we take a survey about the Back Alley Business Secret District. To put in your two cents (assuming they listen and aren't just after numbers), go to http://zyn.ga/FDJ. They my have listened to the last one because the ratios are much. If they would increase the stats of the loot items, these would be much more fun.

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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