Limited Time Missions

Zynga has just introduced limited time missions. The first of these is "Brother of Mine." I am on the last of the six parts so this article discusses what some of the latter parts require, if the mission is worth it for you, and how to finish the mission.

One of the first things you will notice in starting the mission is that you need the help of your mafia. As you progress in the mission, you will need more and more help.

On the first part of the mission you need five people to help you. On the final part you need 25 mafia members to help you. You also will need to build items, fight, declare wars, etc. Mafia Wars has changed over time to force characters to be more well-rounded. This is especially true in this mission.

Fighting is everywhere in these missions. You get normal XP for fighting an enemy. However, later in the quest some of these enemies require a lot of stamina to fight. So here are the screen captures.

The above screen capture is from about the fourth part of the mission: part one has as its hardest part your needing the help of three mafia members, part two has collecting from your dockyard as the hardest part, part three requires more help from mafia members - but here you really need to fight. Each person you have to fight takes 15 stamina. This can affect leveling: you get 1-2 xp to fight a person taking 15 stamina to fight.

These fights stem from the screen shown next.

As you can see from this you are fighting a lot. As part of this quest you fight people in NYC and Las Vegas. You fight progressively harder henchmen: 1 stamina, 5 stamina, 15 stamina. But the XP is in general good for finishing parts of the mission. The next screen shows my one possible mistake.

Part 3 or4 of the mission requires you to build two cars. Combined with collecting from the dockyard twice, you can spend more than two days just waiting to complete these parts. Not knowing the remaining parts of this mission, I spent the RP to build a second car. I also should have waited though; I did this late at night, built the car giving a +6 stamina bonus, so I didn't need to build immediately.

The lesson here: time is important in these quests, but you may not need to rush that much.

So what is the end game? Below is the last mission. You need to fight for it and get a lot more help from your mafia.

So what advice can I offer to finish this?

First, start early. Whenever Zynga starts an event you need to start it and keep up with it almost immediately. If you fall behind, you will pay for it.

Second, you need stamina. Until about September of 2010 Mafia Wars characters could be all energy. However, these missions require you fighting almost 100 people, some of which require 15 stamina at a pop.

Third, if you start when the mission begins there is more than enough time to complete the mission. The mission would have taken me 4 days, perhaps 5, without using any RP. However, I didn't know what the mission parts were ahead of time - you do (from this article.) If there were a lot more "collect" or "build" parts to the mission then you would need to speed things up for these tasks.

Fourth, you need the help of your mafia. People will get tired of helping others - I get 50+ requests a day for "crew." But when you need that 15th person's help, you may need to send out 50 invites to get that 15th person.

Fifth, something that may mislead you is that the XP for these missions is level-dependent. Where I get 2000XP for a mission a lower level character may get 500XP and a higher level character may get 3000XP. Conversely, lower-level characters get easier (lower stamina) targets - but not MUCH easier.

Sixth, pay close attention to the wording of each mission. For example, some missions require you to fight - not win fights. It is easy to fight if you don't have to win. Others require you to win fights.

Happy hunting!