Mafia Wars: Las Vegas Collections take you into the Nevada desert

New collections have appeared in Mafia Wars today, but you'll have to head over to Sin City to find them. These four Las Vegas Collections are part of Zynga's gradual update to the city and provide impressive stat boosts like permanently increased health, energy and increased loot drop chances.

Check out what you'll need to find, and more importantly, what you'll win after the break.
Mafia Wars Las Vegas Collections list
Log into the game and if you don't already see the Las Vegas Collections promotional banner, just check your profile and find them under the "Collections and Vault" tab. Here's each of the four collections and what you'll need to find while you're doing jobs in Vegas:

The Cactus Collection (+30 Health):

    Christmas Cactus
    Silver Cholla
    Cottontop Cactus
    Hedgehog Cactus
    Prickly Pear Cactus
    Barrell Cactus
    Saguaro


Mojave Animals Collection (+10 Energy and +10 Stamina):

    Jackrabbit
    Coyote
    Roadrunner
    Rattlesnake
    Kit Fox
    Golden Eagle
    Mountain Lion


Poker Hands Collection (+20 Attack and +20 Defense):

    Pair
    Two Pair
    Three of a Kind
    Full House
    Four of Kind
    Straight Flush
    Joker


Matchbooks Collection (Ten percent drop rate increase while in Vegas):

    Loot Isle Casino
    Camelot Hotel
    Giza Las Vegas
    Florentine Resort
    Soft Rock Casino
    Jersey, Jersey
    Planet Bollywood


Head on back over to Las Vegas for a chance at improving your character even further, but don't forget to bring back the Rat Pack while you're at it.

Mafia Wars Zynga Request Page finally live, other games wait patiently

Thanks to the Zynga Request Page finally appearing in Mafia Wars, you can now send and receive gifts and Energy, respond to help requests and accept mafia invites in the game without leaving to another page. Just click on the envelope icon next the Help box in the upper right corner of the game screen to access all of your requests in the game.

Your requests are by default organized in one list, but you can view by category if you'd rather not get confused. Accepting gifts automatically places them in your inventory and allows you to send "Thank You" gifts right from the page. However, you're not given the option to choose the gift you send, which most likely means that you'll automatically send the same gift in return. A choice on what gift to send would have been much better, but this will have to do for now.

According to Mafia Wars Maniac, accepting gifts also has the chance of rewarding you with Loyalty Points. Pretty sweet deal for not doing much of anything. Unfortunately, we're experiencing a bug that only allows you to send a certain amount of "Thank You" gifts in return before the option fails to appear anymore. We hope this is fixed soon or our mafias are going to think we're all jerks who don't like gifting back.

Sadly, the full Zynga Request Page has yet to make it into some of Zynga's other games like Treasure Isle and FrontierVille, but hopefully it's only a matter of time before this feature is available in all of the studio's games. In the meantime, you'll have to suffer the new old-fashioned way.

Mafia Wars Slots Super Items added to Bonus Wheel, pay big to win big

The Lucky Stash Slot Machine in Mafia Wars was always an obligatory thing to do each day when you were given a free spin or something to pump extra Reward Points into when there was nothing else better to buy--which probably never happened. Finally, Zynga added some extra incentive to spinning that wheel more than once daily with Slots Super Items.

These items are only available by filling the Bonus Meter completely and spinning the Bonus Wheel for free. Before, the Bonus Wheel was only filled with various amounts of Reward Points and meager items with stats that weren't even impressive when the feature was first introduced in July 2010. But spinning now can win you some pretty impressive animals, weapons, armor and vehicles like the Rex Fang (73 Attack, 35 Defense).

The cheapo in me is still only going to use his free daily spin, but at least this is something better to look forward to than items like the Box Jellyfish (28 Attack, 56 Defense). Seriously, at least bring something to a fight that you could fashion into a shiv... like a swordfish.