Zynga announced yesterday that animals will become a combat item class of their own yesterday. Here is the official announcement.

“The animals are coming! Mafia Wars is pleased to announce that animals will have a new importance in the game. Starting next week, animals will become a fully-fledged combat item class that you can use. In fights and robbing, you’ll bring one Weapon, Armor, Vehicle, AND Animal for each Mafia member you use in the fight! All existing animals in the game will be converted to this new “Animal” item type.

In preparation for this change, we’re kicking this off by having “Animals Gone Wild!” week. During this week, animals will be dropping from jobs, fighting and robbing. If you want a head start in assembling your private zoo, you can go to the Marketplace to get your hands on our new Vicious Crates. These crates will contain exclusive LE animals that can’t be found anywhere else. We’ll also be featuring various LE animals in our hourly sales slots, so keep an eye out for those great deals!

We are also releasing two Limited Edition animals on the Marketplace: an African Lion and Pit Bull. These will only be available this week – so make sure you grab them before it’s too late!”

With this announcement Zynga ensures that players will be clamoring for animals now. Are they yet another thing to blow Reward Points on? To some spending reward points for limited items and animals is how they play. This type of player must have at least one of every limited item, and there is nothing wrong with that at all. Others spend Reward Points on nothing but skill points…that’s me.

Here are the stats for the two limited edition animals mentioned in the official announcement.

African Lion – 58 attack, 36 defense

Pit Bull – 35 attack, 57 defense

If you want these animals you need to act quickly since they will only be available this week.

I’ve been getting quite a few e-mails asking about unlocking the various trillion dollar achievements and if it was worth the time. I figured that the preparing for Bangkok post would be an answer, but the questions keep coming.

To be blunt, if you are chasing down the 999 trillion dollar achievement, you need to get your head checked. The best paying job in New York only pays out $56 million and costs 35 energy. You would need to do this job over 17 million times to collect $999 trillion, and at 35 energy per job, you would need to spend over 600 million energy to hit that mark. In other words – it is not happening in this lifetime.

You would need 6.25 million energy to hit the 10 trillion achievement. If you spend about 20,000 energy a day (I usually do about that on my main account), you can get this in a full year’s time, if you focus entirely on the “Take Control of a Casino” job. Read the rest of this entry