Getting Started on Mafia Wars

Welcome to the gang ridden world of Mafia Wars. If you are already playing the game and just looking for specific tips, browse the list of articles in the guide on the left to find the information you are looking for. For the rest of you, you probably have gotten a request to play from one of your friends, followed by e-mails, phone calls, text messages, and a horse head in your bed till you finally agreed to play. Here you should find all the basics you need to get started and get your own personal Family going.
A brief introduction

The game is broken into a few key objectives. There is a level based system that rewards you and your friends for your continued growth in levels. There is an economic engine that rewards you for making smart choices and converting as much of your earned income into passive income as possible. There is also a social networking aspect that rewards you for having more and more friends playing with you, whether it is from signing up the friends you already have or making new friends who are already playing. The game is fun, addictive, and best of all can be played well with a minimum daily investment of time.
Your first time in

When you log in for the very first time, there will be a little spiel to get you excited, a picture of your first property – Uncle Louie’s Deli – and a bar with your initial stats. These stats are what you will spend most of your time tracking.
Cash

Every hour your properties will pay out and any items you have with maintenance costs will deduct from your earnings. On the Properties tab which you will see later you can always see how much you are making and how much it is costing you. See the Property Moguls section of the guide for a better breakdown on earned vs. passive income and how to maximize this. It is also worth noting you have a bank account that you can store money in, but any money in the bank will not be reflected here.
Health

This is a fairly meaningless stat and it is the only naturally replenishing stat that the game will not show you a timer on. It is critical in boss fights which are outlined in great detail in the Doin’ the Job section. Other than that, it just sets the amount of times you get attacked when a hit is put out on you and how many fights you can engage in before healing.
Energy

Energy is the principal source of your earned income and a large chunk of your XP. It will come back 1 point every 5 minutes. Doin’ the Job will give you a thorough breakdown on leveraging your energy as well as discussing the speed leveling technique utilizing energy. Jobs and items will be your initial focus once you get in to the game.
Stamina

This also regenerates at one point every 5 minutes. Stamina is used to try to attack other players, rob other players, cash in on a hit on another player, sucker punching, and placing hits on other players. Fightin’ and Robbin’ will get in to all the specifics of how you can leverage your stamina, win more fights, get robbed less often and all those great details. Outside of jobs, this is the only other way to generate XP.
Do Something About It!

The game will walk you through a simple series of examples of what the game contains once you are completely free to make your own choices. The first job is exactly what most will be about… You spend X energy for Y experience, some amount of money, and with some jobs, a small chance at special loot. Enjoy this first one as you will never get 2 or more experience per energy later in the game. And congratulations! You got a loot item and a dummy NPC to invite in to your mob to get to size 1! We will talk more about Mafia size later and the Fightin’ and Robbin’ section has a lot more to say. Next you will make your first attack and then buy your first property and the first real decision comes in to play.
Choosing your Character type

You can change your name later, but there will be a fairly hefty cost, so think about how you would like your Mafioso name to be. "Don" plus your last name works well and the game supports multiple people with the same name. Default Don is the most common name out there followed by all the characters from the Godfather. The more unique and memorable your name, the more thematic some of the in game text will be for your friends. As for character type, here is a break down on what the choice entails. Currently, there is no way to change it once you make it, so consider carefully.
Mogul

As a Mogul your cash flow will come in every 54 minutes rather than every hour for the other character types. As a Mogul you are also the only character type eligible for being a Bagman. As a Bagman in one of your friend’s Top Mafia, you have the change to get double money from performing jobs. Since we want to be generating passive income rather than earned and there is no real use for money anymore once you get to around level 40, this is the least interesting of the character types unless your friend group happens to need more eligible Bagmen options.
Maniac

As a Maniac, your energy regenerates at a rate of 1 every 3 minutes instead of 5. You also become eligible to be a Button Man which gives you a chance to automatically win any fight you initiate. General consensus on the web before the Top Mafia changes was this was the best type to choose since energy drives a lot of your leveling. The flip side to this is if you are speed leveling, you are counting more on the energy refills from leveling up and Energy Paks than from natural regeneration. The special Top Mafia ability is not very exciting as we will only be initiating fights we expect to win anyway. Basically, it boils down to out of the 5-10% of fight you will lose to Critical hits, you will win about 5% of them instead.
Fearless

As a Fearless character your health regenerates at a faster rate. You also have the ability to be a Top Mafia Wheel Man which has the best special ability. Whenever you perform a job, there is a small chance that job will cost no energy. Since at higher levels jobs can cost as much as 60 energy to run, this is a very non-trivial bonus and will greatly aid the speed at which you level. The health regeneration itself is not a very meaningful bonus since using the hospital to top off at any point in time is a non-issue.
Your initial Skill Points

After you make your decision, you will get your first skill points to spend. It is highly recommended you just upgrade your Energy till at least 30 before touching the other stats. See the speed leveling section under Doin’ the Job for more details on spending your initial skill points.
Starting over or... not

Unfortunately, the game currently does not really support anyway for starting over. If you are unhappy with your initial choices, you have to delete the application, wait 60 days for it to time out, and then log in again to get a clean start in the Mafia world. None of the choices you make outside of character type though can't be fixed, so we recommend you try to work with whatever state you are currently in. If you do wish to delete the app and wait 60 days, in the lower left hand corner of any Facebook page you should see a button labelled Applications. Click on it to open the menu and near the top of the menu you will see Edit. Choose this and then click on the x next to Mafia Wars to remove it as one of your applications.