New Mystery Bag Items

The mystery bags got a makeover - same concept, just new items.



In addition to some new items, players can now get 100 Free XP from mystery bags.



Here is what I have found so far:

100 Experience Points
Wishlist Items
Many different kinds of boosts
+5 Free Skill Points
+1 Reward Point
Chop Shop Items
Cricket Cage
Uilleann Pipes (St. Patrick's Day Collection Item)
Shamrock
Luck of the Irish
Green Limo

..and I'm sure there are a lot more items (feel free to post what you find in the comments).



The unfortunate thing that is a lot of these items are either 1) free gifts 2) easily gotten (chop shop items, boosts, etc).

There are still a few useful items (+100 XP, +5 skill points, +1 reward point), however, it seems that once again the "good" rewards are limited. Nearly everyone's first mystery bag seems to yield 100 XP, and the +skill points and +reward points are fairly rare. However, they're certainly better than nothing! The +5 skill point reward can go very far along with the extra stamina and energy each day from the chop shop!

St. Patrick's Day Collection and Dublin Derby Event

The St. Patrick's Day event is now live! Here are the details:


Fix the Dublin Derby

There is a new limited time job, and like previous events, there is a 5 minute, 8 hour, and 24 hour option.


Each job has it's own item associated with it:

Blackmail the Judges: Vintage Binoculars (weapon; 14 attack, 23 defense). Thanks Juliano for the pic!



Switch the Jockey: Horse Training Whip (weapon; 24 attack, 13 defense)


Steal the Favored Horse: Horse Trailer (22 attack, 16 defense)


For mastering the job (getting 100% mastery), you will get the Winner's Wreath:



Much like Valentine's Day, there is a new collection, the St. Patrick's Day Collection. There are 7 total pieces:

Irish Flag (drops from featured job - simply keep performing the featured jobs until you get the flag)
Green Fireworks (drops from random jobs; any normal job can drop this)
Leprechaun (drops from random jobs; any normal job can drop this)
Green Bowler's Cap (drops from random jobs; any normal job can drop this)
Lucky Pint Glass (drops randomly from fights; any normal fight can drop this)
Pot of Gold (drops randomly from fights; any normal fight can drop this)
Bag Pipes (free gift from friends; can be sent on the free gifts page)


This time, all the limited time jobs drop the Irish Flag (not just the 5 minute job like with the Heart Tattoo). Since every limited time job can drop the Irish Flag, it is unlikely that it will be as valuable as the Heart Tattoo became, although there is a chance this item will be at least worth a high-end loot piece or two.

The reward for vaulting the collection is the Irish Wolfhound (weapon; 48 attack, 29 defense).

Lucky Shot Achievement

For vaulting the collection and mastering off the Dublin Derby limited time job, you can achieve the Lucky Shot achievement.




Find the Rare Dublin Stallion

This item has a very low % drop rate from the limited time job and can also be purchased for Godfather points. It is a horse (vehicle) with 26 attack and 51 defense.


Lucky's Pot o' Gold:



From the marketplace. I'm not really sure what the appeal here is - buying 7 items (and spending 100 reward points+) for a chance to win 100 reward points? That's like buying a raffle ticket for $5 for a chance to win $4.

I'm not sure what marketplace items count for the total. If you find out, feel free to leave a comment!

Crew Collections; Prototype Carjacking, Theft of a Drone, and Weapons Shipping Hijacking

A new type of collection has been introduced to the game - the Crew Collections.



Here is how it works:


Basically, you can get collection pieces either by 1) asking for help 2) helping out your friends. However, it is not quite that simple.

Helping a Friend

When you offer to help a friend, you get around 1 hour to "find" the piece assigned to you in the mission. The drop is completely random but unfortunately very rare. As a result, it can take quite a few job completions to get your item, which can be tough within the hour time span. Your best bet is to repeat the 1 energy cost job in the Street Thug tier.

Once you find the piece your friend is looking for, you will both get a copy of the item. You can help out 5 friends in a 24 hour period.

Additionally, you have to earn at least 1 piece from each collection before you can call for help on it, so you will have to help out friends who have other collections unlocked in order to get access to all the items.


Asking for Help

When you ask for help, in order to get the item needed, you have to get your friends to help you and then actually have them procure the item within the hour! This will not happen often, since only 5 friends total can help you out and the item drop that they are looking for is pretty rare. However, since you can only call for help once every 48 hours (total, not once for each collection), odds are your friends will at least try to help you out in an effort to earn a piece for themselves.


Sets and Rewards

As noted above, it can be quite tough to complete these collections. It's certainly doable if you spend a lot of time playing and chasing down these collections, however, it does not seem to be much worth the effort at the moment:

Reward for the Prototype Carjacking collection: Koenigsberg S10 (vehicle; 30 attack, 46 defense).

Reward for the Theft of a Drone collection: Military Spy Drone (vehicle; 33 attack, 47 defense).

Reward for the Weapons Shipping Hijacking collection: Fox Hunter (weapon; 48 attack, 27 defense).


As it stands, collecting these items does not seem to be worth the effort given that these are not much better than top-tier loot pieces. If you really want to finish the collections and are a high level player, I'm sure it will be quite easy to trade high-end loot pieces for the collection pieces rather than collecting the pieces yourself.

---

Personally, I'm not going to even bother with these collections right now - the items just aren't worth the time spent. I'm sure in a week or two these collection pieces will plummet in value rapidly, and it will be easy to pick up a full collection set for a mere 10-20 high end loot pieces.

Ace in the Sleeve

Ace in the Sleeve (53 attack, 23 defense) is an item now available in Mafia Wars.



To get this item, simply install the Zynga Poker App and get to level 6 (in poker). About the best way to do this seems to be to just get into a 1 round tournament and play.

---

String of Firecrackers now has 46 defense. This is the reward from the Mystery Bag Collection.

---

There are two new free gifts: Zip Line (vehicle; 15 attack and 20 defense) and Hyena on Chain (weapon; 20 attack, 16 defense).

---

There's not much else going on in the game right now. St. Patrick's Day is coming up, so expect an in-game holiday event soon!

Chop Shop - The Final Word

So, I've been messing around with the Chop Shop over the last few days, and here are the highlights:

Upgrades

The Chop Shop is upgradeable up to level 10. There are 5 items you will need for each upgrade: Shipping Containers, Cement Blocks, Power Tools, Car Lift, and Acetylene Torches. There are several ways to get these upgrade pieces:

- As free gifts. Every Mafia Wars player can send 2 types of these upgrade pieces as free gifts.

- From jobs and fighting. These upgrade pieces are a somewhat rare drop from doing jobs and fighting in any city.

- By asking for help. Every 24 hours, you can post a request for "help" collecting an item. Simply go into the Chop Shop page and click "Upgrade" and you will see an "Ask for Help" button below some of the item types. Pick the one you have the lowest one and offer up a request. Note: This 24 hour timer seems to reset if you upgrade your chop shop, so it is possible to call for help on items back to back.

- By spending godfather points. You can trade 1 godfather point for each item. It would require quite a few Godfather points to fully upgrade your chop shop, as you will a few hundred of these pieces to finish up.

The cost for upgrading = (current level + 4) car parts of each type. For example:

If you are level 5, you will need 9 (5 + 4) of each type of ingredient to upgrade your chop shop to level 6.

By upgrading your Chop Shop, your shop will produce more car parts per hour. You will also gain access to more vehicle types, which are listed in the Chop Shop Cars post.


Parts

Your chop shop will produce "Car Parts" on its own every 24 hours. This is a generic item and you will need quite a few of these items to make cars. You can also find these generic car parts as a common drop from fighting and doing jobs in any city. In addition to these items, some cars require other specialty car parts, such as Thai Car Parts, Bulletproof Glass, and Solar Panels.

Solar panels and Bulletproof Glass drop randomly from doing jobs and fighting in what seems like any city (though I found mine in New York). They have a very low drop rate, but if you play a lot, you will find a lot of these.

City Car Parts (Thai Car Parts, Cuban Car Parts, etc) drop from their prospective cities randomly while doing jobs and fighting. For example, you will only find Cuban Car Parts when fighting and doing jobs in Cuba.


Vehicles

Now, the Chop Shop no longer produces 1 vehicle randomly every 24 hours. You have to build vehicles using the car parts listed above. I listed all the vehicles in a previous post linked above that you can choose from. Unlock more vehicles by upgrading your chop shop.

Note that you can only produce 1 vehicle per 24 hours, even if you have the car parts. As a result, you want to pick the best possible cars to build.

Right now, it seems the best two cars are the Rebel 2 and the Solar Flare. The Rebel 2, with 40 attack and 45 defense, has pretty good stats and gives you +5 stamina for purchasing. That would be +5 max stamina - so you could go from 15/15 to 20/20 by purchasing this vehicle.

The Solar Flare stats aren't as high as the Rebel 2 but it gives out +5 energy for purchasing. Once again, that is max energy. Each time you buy another one of these cars you can increase your stats by +5. The only catch is that you can only do it once every 24 hours.

Since you can increase your stats through this function, you can make big improvements in your character as it is like getting an extra level up each day that you build one of these cars. By doing this for a month, you could end up with an extra max 150 stamina or energy points. This will in turn result in more jobs done and more fights participated in, which would precipitate further levels and even more stat points. This is definitely a worthwhile use of your Mafia Wars time, don't ignore it if you want to stay ahead of the curve!