Overall
Requirements
Overall is unique in that you have to meet some basic requirements before you can appear on the rankings. As the month goes on, you might end up in a state where you no longer fufill the requirements, and you will fall off of the rankings, but the only time it really matters is at the end of the month. The game doesn't care if you qualify or not except when it records the final scores, so a wily fisher could wait until the last day or even the last minute before making an appearance. The only advantages of being on the rankings at any time other than the end of the month are publicity and intimidation, since your personal fishing page records your statistics in more detail than the Overall ranking list.
The requirements to be ranked on overall is that 1/4th of your total catches must be
fish from Bass'ken, and another 1/4 must be
fish from Gambino. Catching trash from Bass'ken or Gambino does
not count towards the 1/4 requirement. The remaining 1/2 of your catches may be any fish or junk. Optimally, you want as much of this 1/2 as possible to be filled with the high scoring, high PI fish from Durem, and as little as possible to be filled with low scoring, low PI junk.
Scoring
The score for a lake or junk is easy to calculate - it's simply the total of the scores of all the items you've caught from that particular category. The scoring for Overall is slightly more complex. Your final score is your total Bass'ken, Gambino, Durem, and Junk scores added together and then multiplied by your Performance Index.
The Performance Index, or PI for short, is a measure of the quality of fish you catch. It applies only to Overall, but it plays a huge role in your score, so listen up. PI is calculated by taking the average point value of everything you've caught this month and dividing by 20. This means that any fish worth less than 20 points has less than a 100% PI, and any fish over 20 points is worth more than 100% PI.
To illustrate: a guppy by itself is worth 6 points, so the PI of a fisher who has caught nothing but a single guppy would be 6/20 = 30%.
A fisher who has caught nothing but a trout, which is worth 24 points, would have a PI of 24/20 = 120%
If a fisher had caught exactly one guppy and exactly one trout, the average score between the two fish is 15 (which is 6 points for the guppy plus 24 points for the trout, then divided by 2, the number of fish), yielding a PI of 15/20 = 75%
To demonstrate more fully, consider this bucket:
Calculations
RAW SCORE = 4 boldurs + 5 biters + 7 pebbo + 2 tires = 494pts
PI = RAW SCORE / (20 * NUMBER FISH) = 137.2%
FINAL SCORE = RAW SCORE * PI =
677pts
There are two main issues to discuss as far as Overall strategy goes.
Filtering
Filtering for Overall is a must. Powerfishing will catch junk, which not only has a low PI and score but also prevents you from catching your full potential in high scoring, high PI Durem fish. Minimizing your junk is the key to success in Overall.
For the more adventurous fisher, it is faster in the long run to also filter out one or two small fish in each area. Though you take a hit to your raw score, the reduction in the number of small fish boosts your PI. To help guide you to select which fish to filter where, you can consult this list:
..............................Yellow Guppy
.....Orange Guppy
.....Red Guppy
Bass'ken Lake
............Easy
................Easy
..................Moderate
..............................Green Seedkin
....Blue Seedkin
.......Pink Seedkin
Port of Gambino
.........Easy
.................Hard
.................Hard
..............................White Pebbo
......Brown Pebbo
......Black Pebbo
Durem Reclamation
.....Easy
.................Easy
................Moderate
Filtering out smalls is relatively easy in Bass'ken. However, filtering out all three smalls is time consuming and generally not worth the effort, so if you filter here you should consider leaving out yellow guppies and orange guppies.
Filtering out smalls in Gambino is a bit trickier. Blue and Pink Seedkin can be mistaken for Warm Trout, and vice versa. However, Green Seedkin are very easy to identify, so they should be the choice fish to filter out.
While it may not feel as worthwhile as the other two lakes, filtering in the Durem Reclamation Facility makes just as much of a difference. Since the junk moves as fast as the fish, it can be difficult to tell what is what if you just came from Bass'ken or Gambino, but give it a bit and you should consider filtering White Pebbo or Brown Pebbo at least.
Lake Order
The first point to mention is that you should try to do all the fishing you'll need in a lake before moving on to a different location. Even the most accomplished fisher slows down a bit when moving between lakes, because they have to re-adapt and recall the patterns of movement for the new lake. You might catch a few trash when you move to Bass'ken or Durem, or you might react a little too slow to catch a tuna or boldur.
Common Orders
"Acceleration:"
Bass'ken -> Gambino -> Durem
Gambino -> Bass'ken -> Durem
This order starts off slow - for the first half of the month, your score is going to be in the dumps because you'll have no Durem fish. However, as you move further on, the rate at which your score increases goes up, and you will often find you had a lot more than expected.
"Ninja:"
Bass'ken -> Durem -> Gambino
Gambino -> Durem -> Bass'ken
Durem -> Bass'ken -> Gambino
Durem -> Gambino -> Bass'ken
By fishing out Durem early, you ensure that you will not appear on the Overall board until very late into the competition. Some people might find this to be a hassle because it will not be quite so easy to compare your progress to your fellow Overall hopefuls. However, on the flip side it is difficult for competition to see exactly where you are, possibly allowing you to take them unaware. If you choose a ninja fishing style, be very careful! If you don't judge the amount of fish and junk you have correctly, you might not be able to qualify by the end of the month. You should give yourself a significant margin of time so that if the fishing servers go down for a day or two near the end of the month you don't end up shut out.
Recommended Bait + Rods
+
The History
Gold Overall Winners
1 2005-01 Alexi_Jameson 731814*
1 2005-02 Anjelous 880792*
1 2005-03 Chuck E. Cheese 388521
1 2005-04 Elendilon 1151296
1 2005-05 Venus de Milo 337767
1 2005-06 maharito 507161
1 2005-07 Transcendent 323996
1 2005-08 Gaidin 366404
1 2005-09 TiO1-NeoMaha 398274
1 2005-10 Cronos99 435335
1 2005-11 gutszi 107095
1 2005-12 Shil Reborn 253165
1 2006-01 Ariela Steadfast 451124
1 2006-02 Makaeru 255938
1 2006-03 chaos_butterfly 287919
1 2006-04 Silence` 262391
1 2006-05 zickkun 431948
1 2006-06 H o l y V a i l 320386
1 2006-07 ??? ???
1 2006-08 Cougar_The_Shell_Bullet 340350
1 2006-09 Shadow.Of.Aphrodite 282363
1 2006-10 Saint_MacLeodmx 412023
1 2006-11 Bria_Teragram 479849
1 2006-12 DJ Trouble 331972
1 2007-01 DJ Trouble 395993
1 2007-02 Blue_nanobot 375520
1 2007-03 Holy Knight57 177843
1 2007-04 Mradu 505632
1 2007-05 [ - Silent Whisper - ] 275268
Statistics
Record Low:..............................gutszi, November 2005, 107095 points
Record High:..............................Elendilon, April 2005, 1151296 points
Median:......................................370962 points
Mean:.........................................412095.25 points
Standard Deviation:..................210521.841 points
*PI had not been implemented by this time.
Q. How much time and gold does it take to earn a trophy?
= 16 points
= 
= 26 points
= 24 points
= 
= 34 points
= 32 points
= 
= 42 points
