Zynga always releases cities in 2's Cuba is like New York, Bangkok is like Moscow, and Italy is like Las Vegas! So we where all expecting something new, and... different, but we had no idea that this is what we were going to be looking AT.
We will start with Your crew first, as that's the first thing that's going to grab your attention, these are like your Top Mafia, but limited to just Brazil. Zynga we know you want to play with the TopMafia, and we REALLY hate it when you try to, but this is a great alternative! It gives us interaction with out friends as well as giving us some nice bonus's!!!!
Jobs
Your Strategist - Gives you a 2x Mastery boost for 20 jobs
Your Lockpick - Double loot for 20 jobs
Top Mafia Tip: Use your Lockpick first on jobs that drop consumables, then use your Strategist on Jobs that require consumables, End result, only needing 1/2 the amount of consumables and only spending half the amount of energy farming them!
Fighting
Mercenary - 50 fights Stamina free!
Marksman - Double your attack skill for 50 fights
TopMafia Tip: Use your Marksman, on that guy who you can never seem to beat! Your Mercenary is good anytime :)
Robbing
Scout - Helps you find the Precious metals collection items
Arsonist - Guaranteed success on 1/3 of your first 3 robbing boards
TopMafia Tip: Watch your boards, when u have 3 HARD properties in the first 3 slots, then activate your Arsonist, and Sacrifice as many burners as you need, to win on properties that your scout points out to you!
Properties
TaskMaster - Double collection amounts on your propertes
Guardian - Protects you from being robbing in Barazil for 18 hours
TopMafia Tip: Keep your Guardian active @ all times! Make sure someone is always in this slot, and when you want to use your task master, waste as much energy & stamina as you can, because when collecting your Barracks and Refinery it will also give you Double energy and Stamina!
Properties
Again Zynga has dome something different. One Property makes cash (and not a lot of it), One makes loot, another makes consumables, and the last two, one makes Stamina the other Energy. THE LAST TWO ARE THE BEST AND SHOULD BE UPGRADED FIRST! Both were suggestions made During the PAC meeting in San Francisco!!!
The best part is the properties use OLD construction parts! But there are still 2 Items to loot the "Construction Worker" and the "Brazilian Timber". You will still need 315 Timbers and 450 Workers to fully upgrade :( but @ least its not 5 things your trying to loot!
Robbing
Robbing is also different in Brazil. Two properties only build loot. There are only THREE properties to rob, and then considering 1 makes Cash, and the other 2 make Energy and Stamina. Now, when robbing someones Barracks or Refinery you can loot Energy and Stamina! Thats right, you can Earn some energy and stamina whilst robbing!
No one knows how much you can rob just yet, as not many have unlocked these properties yet, But only time will tell! unfortunately the robbing ratio will be another 2.0 roughly... no one will know for sure till more people start building their Barracks and Refinery
Collections
The collections are nice, more health, attack, defense, energy and stamina but no re-vault :( with ONE exception, the Precious metals collection, which can ONLY be found robbing, This can be re-vaulted. THE CATCH IS, IT CAN ALSO BE ROBBED! That's right, someone can Steal your collection pieces! Te revault is nice to, giving a chance of skill points or Brazilian Real $'s
Jobs
The good news is you need a LOT less consumables then we did in Italy!
Italy needed 940 Consumables for chapters 1-5
Brazil only needs 328!
1/3rd as much!
So the totals are:
Local Informant: 40
Gas Can 40 For Belem and 60 for Sao Paolo: Heliopolis
Button Camera: 36
Radio Phone: 48
Satchel Charge: 104
We still recommend u pick them up at Bronze level, but if you don't, that's fine, as there isnt a lot of back tracking to find them
Ratios next, Well here is where the bad news kicks in, they are all over the place, some are good some are bad, Some Gold mastery Jobs have a better ratio then the Ruby counterparts.... Overall the ratios are to be expected from a 1-5 Chapter release on average they are about a 1.7, but there are some above 2.0's in there as well!
Chapter 3, Gold mastery "Take Out a Rebel Lookout" 2.0 Ratio
Chapter 2, Ruby Mastery "Gun Down Kidnappers" 2.016 Ratio
Mastery next, Mastery is easy this time it seems, if its 10% for Bronze level mastery, its also 10% for Silver, Gold and Ruby mastery, it seems whoever is in charge of coming up with jobs that have 2% and 1% mastery is on holidays!
But the good news is the Mastery Loot is simlar to New York, giving you Bonus's to your profile rather then loot thats going to become obsolete sooner or later!
Mastery bonus's are:
20% increase to required loot drops
20 second reduction to the hospital cooldown timer
20% robbing resistance for Brazilian Properties
10% discount on city store items
10% experience increase from Missions
And the good news is apart from the robbing resistance they seem to work in all cities!
Jobs
Well this is where I have more BAD news...... and some good news!
Good news first, the new Loot tracker when doing jobs is GREAT, this allows us to keep track of their last 15 or so loot drops without having to revert to a bookmarklet!
We expect that each new city will cost more energy then the last, but Someone @ Zynga didn't sit down with a calculator and work out how much more we would need!
For Italy 1-5 you need 309859 Energy
For Brazil 1-5 you need 755198 Energy
Thats more then TWICE AS MUCH!!! Sure there are 20 Extra jobs.... But thats a LOT of extra energy!!!
A lot of that extra energy cost comes from the last Chapter of Brazil, which have ruby jobs that cost over 750 Energy per click! Again I understand Zynga wants to increase the total cost of a City, as well as the maximum energy cost per click, But the TOP JOB in Italy "Tip Off The Rome Police" cost only 356 Energy per click. Brazil costs more then twice as much, and we still have Chapters 6-8 to be released!!!
I understand that Mastering Brazil 1-5 will give us 232 Skill points to allocate BUT Zynga, I think you set the mark to high, 400 maybe 500 energy per Click would of been reasonable, if you have over 6K energy but that means with each of these jobs clicking 8 Times before running out of energy!!!
I also understand that your trying to get players to have more energy as the more energy they have the more loot they can get the easier we have with challenge missions etc., but really this is a bit extreme!
Small Gradual increases go unnoticed, BIG MORE THEN TWICE THE PREVIOUS CITY sends people running around in a panic!!!
Over the last few days I've had conversations with several people that admit they dont even have 750 energy in total, sure they have 8K combined A&D but dont have any energy, havn't finished Moscow, or Bangkok and they are up in arms that they are not even going to be able to do A job in Brazil!
To each and everyone of them I've made a few simple suggestions.....
1. Get 2K ENERGY YESTERDAY!!! the more energy u have the more loot u can get (rather then relying on gifting yourself loot, or asking friends for loot) and the more things you can master that will give SKILL POINTS that you can put into Attack & Defence!!!
2. USE THE ASK FOR HELP on these Jobs. Sure it might take forever to get them done, but if u havn't finished a City that was released over a year ago we can tell your not in a rush!
Finally, what do we miss from Vegas and Italy? Well the boss fights, Brazil is completely absent a boss fight! You can click your way thru, never having to stop and heal 100 times to defeat a boss!
Job Paths and Stamina Jobs, these where a nice option, Not that I'd ever recommend skipping a job and missing out on a skill point, but lots of people miss the paths, and the Stamina based jobs!
And a property that builds skill points! But a refill is a nice trade off
Some other nice enhancements, is you can now ask for help with ANY Job!
The art work is better then ever and some of the close ups are almost photo quality!, but i do miss being able to view any jobs image
But there is a bookmarklet for that! Paste the following code into any Brazil job page to be able to see all the artwork @ once
javascript:$('.job_art').each( function(){$(this).css({"height":225})});
thanks to team Spockholm for that little gem!
The other thing I Miss from the art work, is the one line comments, like we had in Vegas and Italy, and that rather then focusing on 2-3 key players in the art, its now quite a few more people so I feel less attached to them, And the job's dont always make sense and follow a story line "Create a Shark Scare" Followed by "Steal Confidential Medical Records", "Blackmail a University Instructor" and finally "Raid a Biochemist's Lab"
I'm not sure what one has to do with the next, in Italy we could SEE the storyline unfold and getting to the next job was half the fun!
One last thing is there any Loot to grab? Well the answer is Yes. 2 items were replaced, the Feighter replacing the PopeMobile and the Black Cainman replacing the Golden Poison Frog. Drop rates are still unknown @ this stage but expect those to be covered soon!
Overall Brazil has been something Different, I know its still in Beta and I'm expecting more tweaks to come, what they are who knows? But we still have 3 months before 6-8 are released so we have some time to play with it
