If the new Golden Party Hats have the same value as the previous ones, they could be worth billions of dollars in a day.
RuneScape player 120King claims (opens in new tab) they started cooking sailfish at 6:40 a.m. on Monday. Four hours and "roughly" 4000 cooked sailfish later, they acquired one of eight shards needed to get a Golden Party Hat, a piece of equipment that gives its wearer no stat benefits. They have until 3 January to get the remaining seven shards needed to earn an hat that has no benefits, but may someday make them RuneScape rich.
Party hats were last available for purchase around 20 years ago. Those originals, which also give wearers nothing and are now worth billions in gold, making them RuneScape's most important items.
It's a classic illustration of videogame economy logic. The original Party Hats were worth it because they were useless. When the "partyhat" items were first distributed during 2001's Christmas event they were "intended to be ineffective and disposable," says RuneScape developer Jagex. They offered no other benefit aside from looking festive. They looked like Christmas crackers' paper crowns (opens in new tab) and a lot of players took them off following the event.
Jagex did not reissue the hats next year, or for that matter, ever again. As time went on certain players who kept their Party Hats stopped playing, further decreasing the number of hats available. The hats were a symbol of one’s status as an older player or, because they were scarce and expensive, as a wealthy one.
"The hats now play an essential role in the RuneScape economy as investments, cash-placements, staked items, and collectables," says Jagex. According to a RuneScape Wikipedia, Party Hats actually go for more than 2.1 billion gold. That's only their listed price as it's the limit for a single transaction on RuneScape's Grand Exchange. (A player told me that the blue ones could fetch more than 100 billion.
The new 2021 Party Hats are different from the 2001 party hats. These are Golden Party Hats, whereas the originals were only available in white, blue red, green purple, and yellow. (Correction They were actually pink, not purple, according to a player however the color was changed in response to a glitch in duplication.) The Golden Party Hat will be the symbol of a player's participation in RuneScape's 20th anniversary celebration, or something to trade but they won't be as valuable as the original ones. Each player can only get one Golden Party Hat, so they won't be as widespread as the originals.
To earn the Golden Party Hat, players must accumulate eight Golden Party Hat Shards and have an active RuneScape membership, which costs $11 monthly, or less if they commit to 12 months of Premier Club membership. (Membership can also be purchased with Bonds, which are tradable in-game items, similar to EVE Online's Plex.) You can earn shards by doing specific tasks, such as the 'Once Upon a time in Gielinor’ anniversary quest or purchasing one for 30,000,000 gold. Some others are random drops that happen while players are learning skills or participating in another sport.
Jagex says that a "bad luck protection" system will prevent anyone who's actively playing RuneScape from being left without a hat when the event closes on January 3.
The developer claims that the chances of obtaining the shard will increase exponentially as you master the skill or read clue scrolls. "Essentially, it's our intent that those who are actively participating throughout the event will be able to create their own hats without much hassle."
Some players haven't been able to stop trying to grind Shard drops as quickly as possible, such as making breakfast and cooking thousands upon thousands of sailfish. Another participant on the RuneScape forum reported that they killed "2,000 abyssal demons" without having any Combat Shard drop, while another player claimed they had the Combat Shard after fighting dark creatures for six hours. We all party in our own way.
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Tyler was raised in Silicon Valley with Microsoft and Apple, playing Zork and Arkanoid games on the first personal computers that his parents brought home. Later, he was captivated later by SimCity and Civilization, Command & Conquer and Bushido Blade (yes, he had Bleem! ) and all the "boomer shooters" they now call. Tyler wrote his first review of a professional videogame in 2006: Super Dragon Ball Z on the PS2. He thought it was OK. https://rswiki.net/ He joined PC Gamer in 2011, and now he is focusing on the site's news coverage. He works out at night and adds on his 1,200 hours of Rocket League.