South Africa Tour (Part 4) – The Shipyard

With the release of South Africa there came 2 city properties (aside from Rykdom Bank). The 2 properties are the Shipyard and the R&D Lab.

The chart below shows how many parts that are needed to upgrade each level of the Shipyard;

 

	Zebrawood	Sack Of Mud	Gauteng Zinc	African Brick	Bushveld Steel		Collect Rand
							Every 18 8 hours
	0	0	0	0	0	0	4
	0	1	1	0	0	2	8
	1	3	3	1	1	9	16
	2	5	5	2	2	16	24
	3	7	7	3	3	23	32
	4	9	9	4	4	30	40
	5	11	11	5	5	37	48
	6	13	13	6	6	44	56
	7	15	15	7	7	51	64
	8	17	17	8	8	58	72
	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	80
	36	81	81	36	36	270

 

Shipyard

South Africa Tour (PART 3) – The Achievements

Players of games sure like having achievements. The achievements within the game give players a feeling of accomplishment when a requirement is met. In Mafia Wars the free Skill Point helps too. Albeit, the lone free Skill Point no longer helps as much as one gets thrilled over receiving.

Those players who completed the Dust To Diamonds pre-release event found that upon the opening of South Africa 1 achievement had already been completed. Who knew?

The Crew Driver achievement required players to acquire 200 Crew in South Africa. As players accrued the Head Hunters they were unwittingly acquiring the necessary Crew to master the Crew Driver achievement.

Many of the other achievements in South Africa won’t be so easy to achieve.

South Africa currently has a list of 12 achievements. More are expected as new districts are released. The complete (current) list is as follows;

Not all of the South Africa achievements are even attainable at the moment.

Rand And Rave! In Progress (0/1) Earned by having 1 million Rands in the bank

Since there are only 3 districts and each have 4 levels of mastery players can accrue only 12 of the Vault Codes. In order to upgrade the Rykdom Bank to level 5, when R 1,000,000 can be deposited, players need to acquire 20 of the Vault Codes. Therefore, until the next 2 districts are released meeting the goal of banking R 1,000,000 will be impossible. Since players have already figured out a work-around for securing their Rand the inability of achieving this goal is pointless. The work-around is to purchase items in the South Africa city store with any Rand over what your bank can hold and sell the loots later when you need to bank 1 million Rand.

 

Waka-Waka In Progress (0/5000) Earned by Robbing 5000 times in South Africa

Another achievement that can not be acquired yet is the Waka-Waka Achievement. To meet the goals of this achievement players must Rob 5000 times in South Africa. The Robs will likely have to be successful Robs and not just attempts to rob. Since the district is new and it is a slow process in acquiring enough of the necessary parts to upgrade the properties (Shipyard and R And D Lab) there simply isn’t enough available properties for Zynga to unlock the properties on the Rob board.

Of course this is Mafia Wars. There are ALWAYS ways to work-around what would appear what Zynga wants the players to do. Simply by target robbing from a players profile allows this achievement to be accomplished before Zynga adds the properties to the Rob Boards.

 

 

Chief Kontrakteur In Progress (1/1) Earned by fully upgrading one Property in South Africa   Maybe we can get some Waka-Waka when Chief Kontrakteur is achieved. Of course Chief Kontrakteur will upgrade a property in his time (or Zynga time). With only being able to ask for  building parts once a day and only receiving 4 from post feeds this could take a while. If you can find parts in the Daily takes (if you can beat the scripts) you might speed this along some.

 

Tsotsi-Kill In Progress (0/10000) Earned by winning 10000 Fights in South Africa

Get you boxing gloves on because this is Mafia Wars so there has to be at least 1 achievement that involves fighting. The South Africa fight achievement is called Tsotsi-Kill and requires 10,000 fight wins in South Africa. Fight losses do not count.

To be honest I am uncertain as to how Zynga is calculating your fights won in South Africa.

For this test I ran 1 round of stamina and accomplished the following;

Began	Actual	Finished	Difference
Tsotsi-Kill In Progress (828/10000)	Total Fights: 2871 Won Fights: 2862 Lost Fights: 9	Tsotsi-Kill In Progress (1015/10000)	187

Fighting manually and using the 75 Stamina Power button generated 105 fight wins. It makes no sense, I know. It won’t matter because by the time it’s figured out the achievement will have been won.

 

The last seven South Africa achievements require players to master specified levels of all 3 districts and/or specified districts.

Vu-Vu-Zealous!

	BRONZE Earned by completing the Bronze level Mastery of Districts 1-3 in South Africa
	SILVER Earned by completing the Silver level Mastery of Districts 1-3 in South Africa
	GOLD Earned by completing the Gold level Mastery of Districts 1-3 in South Africa
	RUBY Earned by completing the Ruby level Mastery of Districts 1-3 in South Africa

 

	Dock-ter In The House Earned by completing the Ruby level Mastery of District 1 (Cape Town) in South Africa
	Meenie Miner Mo Earned by completing the Ruby level Mastery of District 2 (Limpopo) in South Africa
	Medisyne Man Earned by completing the Ruby level Mastery of District 3 (Bloemfontein) in South Africa

In-Game Notifications And South Africa Survey

Zynga added an In-Game notification to the sticky bar at the top of the Mafia Wars game. It read as follows;

The notification has been changed and now links to a survey and reads as follows;

http://zynga.tm/mwsa

Mobsters,

Did you know you can earn up to 100 Skill Points per District by Mastering Jobs and Vaulting Collections in South Africa?

Each job in a District of South Africa can be mastered up to Ruby Tier and gives you Skill Points. All the available Districts have 10 jobs.

Bronze Tier: +1 Skill Point for each job (+ 10 Skill Points per District)
Silver Tier: +1 Skill Points for each job (+10 Skill Points per District)
Gold Tier: +2 Skill Points for each job (+20 Skill Points per District)
Ruby Tier: +3 Skill Points for each job (+30 Skill Points per District)
This adds up to a total of 70 Skill Points.

In addition to the above 70 Skill Points, you can Vault Collections and earn:

Rumble In The Docks Collection => Vault for 30 Energy
Diamond Dust Collection => Vault for 30 Stamina
Lethal Dose Collection =>Vault for 35 Health

Please share your Feedback on the new location here: http://zynga.tm/mwsa

Following the link takes you to the survey which asks these questions;

Personally, I do love the Map Interface and design. Graphically South Africa is gorgeous. The Artwork is superb.

The Enjoyment and Fun Factor leaves much to be desired. As does the Gam play. We already stated on the Mafia Spirit Facebook Fanpage;

Is this just another Zynga scam to get you to purchase a gazillion energy refills? South Africa's job energy costs and ratios S-U-C-K and are leaving players needing thousands of XP needed for their next level. It's more likely more will quit than to purchase the refills. JMO.

We understand that Zynga needs to slow the game down some. But, with all the requirements and features running simultaneously players have been groomed for a fast paced that has constant activity. Now, players are running into the thousands short of the necessary XP to level up and to continue their progression while attempting to progress in South Africa. As we stated before, we have to believe that this was intentional by Zynga to persuade players to purchase Energy Refills. This is upsetting to many.

Players are now stating, or developing the belief, that they should pump all their skills into energy. This may, at best, be only a short-term assist to the players who choose to do this. Why? Because the job energy/XP ratios in South Africa vary from player to player. In addition, the energy cost to complete the South Africa jobs also increase as players progress. In other words, players will have the same issues as they continue to progress through South Africa unless they purchase enough loots or energy skills to offset the shortfall of necessary XP to level.

By only adding to energy so you can complete South Africa (at least at a reasonable pace) you will be neglecting your other skill sets. This means that you could potentially find that winning fights and accruing ices may also become more difficult. It’s a vicious cycle.

Then again, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m just over analyzing the game. Maybe this will help the game. We will find out in time the affects of the South Africa job energy cost to XP ratios.