Strategize your Mafia III district takeovers. Learn the optimal order for assigning districts and rackets to unlock powerful favors, weapons, and upgrades like the Stromer assault rifle.
It's best to have a plan as you're taking over the city. The first three districts are pretty by the books. You don't get a whole lot of choices, and you don't unlock favors for these districts. The only choice is whether to do Burke first or Vito. After that, the order you unlock districts and the bosses you assign them to will impact the weapons, and upgrades that you get in the game. So in this section I'll take you through a theoretical decision making process where I lay out a plan for the city after the first three districts.
First, I decide to split up the city evenly, giving each boss 3 districts to keep them all happy so I can get the family trophy and everything along those lines. Then I decide to shuffle the districts a bit so that one of my bosses gets an extra upgrade by the end of the game. I can get Cassandra's faster reload speed on my guns - Burke's ability to steal occupied vehicles without attracting the police - or Vito's four man hit squad. I decide to go with Vito. So Vito will be getting two $140,000 districts.
I try to keep my gang leaders districts together - although there's no gameplay reason to do this. It just makes sense to me.
So I decide to give Vito the Southdowns and French Ward. Cassandra will get Barclay Mills and Downtown. Burke will get Tickfaw Harbor and Frisco Fields.
Now I turn to favors. I want to unlock the powerful Stromer assault rifle as soon a possible, and I'll decide what rackets to do in what order with this in mind.
The 4th district I assign will unlock a silenced weapon. My favorite is the Silenced Deacon .22, which is a favor from Burke. So the first district I go after should be Burke's. That means Tickfaw Harbor. The smuggling racket is the lower damage racket in Tickfaw, so I'll do that racket first to unlock the Deacon. But I'm not going to do the Car Theft racket just yet. I got my silenced gun. I'll go onto other things, and come back later.
The 5th district I assign will unlock vehicle upgrades. The upgrade I'm interested in is the suspension upgrade, to improve the handling on my vehicles. That's a Cassandra favor. So my next target could be Barclay Mills or Downtown. The gun racket in Barclay Mills is only a $30,000 damage racket, so it will be quicker, so I'll do the gun racket in Barclay Mills next, giving it to Cassandra for my suspension upgrade.
The 6th district will unlock weapons, but none of them are really anything I'm interested in. However, I'm really sick of having to drive around picking up my kickbacks. I need to get Vito up to $140,000 income so that Betty Johnson picks up my kickbacks for me. But Vito's districts are the high income districts that don't unlock until you finish the lower districts. So I'm going to go finish Tickfaw Harbor, to unlock the Southdowns for Vito. Finishing Barclay Mills would unlock a district that Burke is going to get, which isn't helpful. After I finish Tickfaw's Car Theft Racket, giving the district to Burke, I unlock all of the silenced weapons to purchase from the weapon dealer if I want a different weapon. I also get access to the speedy De'Leo Traviata after killing Frank Pagani - which is nice. Then I move on to Southdowns. The Gambling Racket is the lowest damage racket in Southdowns at $50,000 damage to take down, so I do that one first, giving the racket to Vito to bring up my income and get the upgrade for Betty Johnson to pick up my kickbacks. I also get the scoped phoenix from Vito as a favor. Meh. But that gets me past that 6th tier of upgrades I wasn't interested in, which is important.
I also need to take a moment to do some side missions for Vicki here to max out Burke's income to gain access to his 7th upgrade, allowing me to clear active police zones by calling in a favor with the dispatcher.
The 7th district will unlock vehicle upgrades. The one I really want right away is bullet proof tires - which is a Burke upgrade. But I know that the 8th district is also going to need to go to Burke to get me my Stromer. So I do a racket in Downtown. The downtown rackets are about the same difficulty. I pick construction - purely at random. And I give the construction racket to Burke to get my bullet proof tires - knowing full well that I'm eventually going to give this district to Cassandra, which won't make Burke particularly happy. It's okay to ruffle feathers once or twice in the game to get the upgrades you want.
The 8th district will unlock top tier weapons - and the whole time I've been dreaming about unlocking that powerful Stromer. But I don't have an 8th district available right now. Before I can move on, I have to finish either Barclay Mills to unlock Frisco Fields, or Downtown to unlock the French Ward. But the French Ward is going to Vito. I need my 8th district to go to Burke for the Stromer. So I go finish the Garbage racket in Barkley Mills - assigning it, and the whole district, to Cassandra. This unlocks additional vehicle upgrades that I can purchase to make my vehicles faster if I'm so inclined. This also unlocks Frisco Fields. The easiest racket in Frisco Fields by a wide margin is the PCP racket. So I then do the PCP racket, giving it to Burke to get my hands on the Stromer as early in the game as possible. At this point, I have most of the upgrades that I care about.
I also need to go do some side missions for Emanuel to max out Cassandra's income so that I gain access to the stability upgrades for my weapons, making the Stromer even more powerful.
At this point, Burke and Cassandra both have a 2nd district. If Vito doesn't get the next district, he will be pissed. I have taken over a racket in every district except for the French Ward, which doesn't open until I finish Downtown. But if I don't give Vito the next racket, he's going to start losing his patience with me, and I'll lose his loyalty. So I will head back down to the Southdowns, and finish up the Black Market racket to give to Vito, giving him the whole district - unlocking additio
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