Beginner Guide

A lot of the basic strategy in mafia wars depends on how you use Skill Points toward Attack, Defense, Energy, Health, and Stamina. These are the basic strategies depending on how you wish to play the game. These are basic guidelines, and most people will find that they will use a combination of these strategies.

Leveler
This is the most popular strategy by far and it will allow you to level up faster. Simply put all skill points into energy and then do lots of jobs. Doing jobs with a high experience to energy ratio will speed up the process and allow you to level faster. The best jobs for high experience to energy ratios are as follows:

Street Thug Tier: Auto Theft (1.33 ratio)
Associate Tier: Bank Heist (1.77 ratio)
Soldier Tier: Museum Break-In (1.5 ratio)
Enforcer Tier: Run Illegal Poker Game, Manufacture Tokens, Get Cheating Deck (1.83 ratio) Note: The Run Illegal Poker Game Job requires 20 Tokens and 20 Cards each time it is done, Therefore this three job cycle is the best ratio on the enforcer tier. The burn down a tenement and federal reserve raids both give a 1.5 ratio without needing Preparatory Jobs.
Hitman Tier: Protect your City against a Rival Family, Assassinate a Political Figure (1.77 Ratio) Note: Both of these jobs have the same experience to energy ratios and do not have to be done together.
Capo Tier: Whack a Rival Crew Leader (1.68 ratio)
Consigliere Tier: Steal an Arms Shipment (1.82 ratio)
Underboss Tier: Order a Hit on a Public Official (1.96 ratio) Note: This job requires an Untraceable Cell Phone each time it is done. The best job without consumable loot is Muscle in on a Triad Operation with a 1.87 ratio.
Boss Tier: Travel to the Old Country (1.978 ratio) Note: this is the last job currently available. Settle a Beef… Permanently has a 1.972 ratio and is the first boss job available.

All of these ratios were computed by taking the experience gained from the job and dividing it by the energy required for the job. Also these ratios were calculated with an 11% more experience bonus and a 10% less energy bonus from top mafia. I would suggest getting those bonuses as high as possible by promoting strong players into the Mastermind and Wheelman Top Mafia positions. So your ratios may be a bit different from mine, but these jobs should still be the best ratios regardless of your bonuses. I would also work on getting The Consigliere Tier level three mastered because you will get a 30 second reduction on the energy regeneration timer and the Boss Tier level three mastered because you will get double energy regeneration. Be warned though, the Boss Tier level three mastery will take quite awhile because of the extremely low job mastery percentages per job (1-2% per job).

Fighter
This strategy will help you win more fights. The basic strategy is to add skill points to attack and defense equally. You will be stronger with 50 points on attack and 50 points on defense than with 75 points on attack and 25 points on defense or vice versa. Since there are other factors in winning fights you will also need to pay attention to things other than skill points. Mafia size is very important, you will need to have 501+ mafia members. As you build up your mafia you should also keep up with items. You can use one weapon, one armor, and one vehicle per mafia member. The best items for fighting are the chain gun as a weapon (The bonus weapon is better than the chain gun and is unlocked at level 99), Body Armor for armor, and towncar for vehicles. Those are the best items that can be bought, but there are many loot items that are better. Just remember that the game will automatically pick the best weapons, armor, and vehicles that you have available with a preference for looted items.

As you build up a strong character you should also build up some stamina so you can put that strength to good use. There is no way that you can know if you will win or lose when attacking someone else, but there are some ways to make sure you’ll win most of the fights you start. Attacking characters with smaller mafias than yours will usually result in a win. If no smaller mafias are available on your fight list then you can click on each character on your fight list and look at their number of fights won and number of fights lost. If this ratio is low you will probably win the fight. As far as health goes, that’s up to you. The only advantage of high health is being able to max out on the hitlist, which will be discussed in another post.

So those are the two main strategies for Skill Point usage. Strong players use both of these strategies to become well rounded players. Using one or the other or both is entirely up to how you wish to play the game, but I would suggest spreading out the skill points between energy, attack, and defense so you can level up pretty well and get a good fight record.