RuneScape player 120King says he started cooking sailfish on Monday at 6:40 p.m. Four hours and “approximately” 4,000 boiled sailfish later, they procured one of the eight shards needed to earn the Golden Party Hat. It is an accessory that gives its user zero stat benefit. They have until January 3 to get the other seven shards they need to get a hat that does nothing but may sometimes make them rich in RuneScape.
The last time party hats were on offer was 20 years ago. The originals, which also give users nothing, are now worth more than 2.1 billion gold, making them RuneScape’s most valuable items.
It’s a classic example of the logic of the video game economy: Original party hats are valuable because they are useless. When the “partyhat” items were first distributed at the 2001 Christmas event, they were “meant to be worthless and disposable,” says Jagex, the developer of RuneScape. Using them is nothing more than looking festive – they resemble the paper crowns found in Christmas cookies – and many players threw them in the trash after the event.
Jagex did not re-release the hats the following year or ever again. Over time, some players who kept their Party Hats stopped playing, further reducing the supply. Hats became a symbol of the status of an older player or rich.
“Hats now play a key role in RuneScape’s economy as an investment, a cash investor, invested items and collectibles,” Jagex says. According to the RuneScape wiki, Party Hats actually costs more than 2.1 billion gold. It’s just their listed price because it’s the limit for a single event on the RuneScape Grand Exchange.
The new 2021 party hats are different from the 2001 party hats. These are Golden Party Hats, while the originals were only white, blue, red, green, yellow and purple. The Golden Party Hat symbolizes a player’s participation in a RuneScape 20th anniversary event or exchange, although they are not automatically as valuable as the originals. Each player can only earn one during a Golden Party Hat event, so they are still rare, but players are unlikely to throw a hat this time.
To qualify for Golden Party Hat, players must collect eight Golden Party Hat chips and have an active RuneScape membership of $ 11 per month or less for players who commit to a 12-month Premier Club membership. (Membership can also be purchased with Bond, which are interchangeable in-game items such as the EVE Online Plex.) Some shards are acquired by completing separate tasks, such as completing the “Once Upon a Time in Gielinor” holiday task or purchasing one for $ 30. million gold. Others are random drops that occur when players practice their skills or engage in other activities.
Jagex says the “bad luck protection” system should prevent anyone actively playing RuneScape from being left without a hat before the event ends Jan. 3.
“As you continue to practice the skill or complete the hint rolls, the likelihood of getting a splinter increases exponentially,” the developer says. “Basically, our goal is for players who are actively playing throughout the event to be able to create their own hat without excessive worry.”
It hasn’t stopped some players from trying to grind shreds as soon as possible, for example, by spending thousands cooking sailfish in the morning. Another player on the RuneScape forum said he killed “2,000 abyssal demons” without seeing Combat Shard fall, while another said he got Combat Shard after fighting dark beasts for six hours. We all celebrate differently.
