Preparing for Mafia Wars Bangkok & Life After Moscow; Strategy Guide

One of the most common questions I have been getting in the recent weeks is what players should do while waiting on Mafia Wars Bangkok to come out. This is intended for players who have already finished Moscow. If you haven't, you can just continue to work on doing that and ignore the advice below.

The transition to life after Moscow can be rough for some, I know, so I have put together a checklist of things you can do while waiting for Bangkok to come out:


1) Get the Lotto Collection - This is something everyone should do!

If you don't have the lotto collection yet, get it. You can trade the highest quality Moscow loot pieces for lotto collection pieces on the official trading forums (called the "Gift Giving" forums for some reason).

Lotto pieces are currently going for 25-50 pieces of Moscow loot. I picked up the 6 of 8 pieces I needed for 188 total top-end Moscow loot pieces.

While this may sound like a lot, just remember Bangkok could be coming out within a week, at which point your Moscow loot will be worthless. If the developers do a rolling start like they did with Moscow, your Moscow loot pieces will still only be top dog for another month. Why not just dump them now while the stock is high, vault the lotto collection, and as a result make yourself able to collect Bangkok loot at a quicker rate?

I think the Lotto collection is grossly underrated, particularly for items that have a really low drop rate. The bonus, +10% item drop rate, is additive rather than multiplicative. Here is how it works:

Item A has a 5% drop rate (you will find it on 1/20 job times doing the job).

- By mastering the tier all three times, you get +10% drop rate. This brings Item A to a 15% drop rate (you will find it on 3/20 times doing the job).

- By vaulting the lotto collection, you get another +10% drop rate. This brings Item A to a 25% drop rate (you will find it on 5/20 times doing the job)

Just by having the lotto collection, you can get a huge increase in drop rates (in this example, 60%-300% drop rate increase), especially for rare items.

If you are playing multiple accounts, your highest level account with the largest energy pool should vault this collection.


2) Get the Money Laundering Collection - Something everyone should do, but only after vaulting the lotto collection.

While I understand the vault boost (-3% on banking fees) is only useful if you use the bank, odds are you are going to be using the bank a lot on Bangkok launch day, at least for the first two episodes. If money is anything like it is in Cuba (low totals), you might even use it a lot more.

You can get the money laundering collection pretty easily just by helping 5 friends launder money each day. You can then trade your excess collection pieces with friends or on the forums to complete your set.

If you're really lazy or impatient, you can also trade high quality Moscow loot for money laundering collection pieces - usually 1-2 pieces of Moscow loot is enough to get money laundering collection items.

Extra Credit

If you already have the 2 collections listed above, here are three more things you can do prior to the release of Mafia Wars Bangkok:

1) For the most dedicated player: you can collect Faberge Hens and save them on a second account. You might have to trade for some of the eggs, though!

2) For those using Mafia Wars Compendium: Get a collector account up to speed and save it for the release of Bangkok.

3) Call your mother. It's the holidays after all!