RuneScape player 120King says they started cooking sailfish at 6:40 a.m. Monday. Four hours and "about" 4,000 boiled sailfish later, they acquired one of the eight shards needed to earn a Golden Party Hat, an equipment that gives the wearer zero statistical advantages. They have until January 3rd to get their hands on the other seven shards they need to get a hat that does nothing but can make them RuneScape rich one day.

The last time party hats were up for grabs was 20 years ago. Those originals, which also give bearers nothing at all, 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 video game economics: the original party hats are valuable because they're useless. When the "party hat" items were first handed out at the 2001 Christmas event, they were "intended to be worthless and disposable," says RuneScape developer Jagex. There were no benefits to wearing them other than looking festive - they resemble the paper crowns you find in Christmas crackers - and so many players threw them away after the event.

Jagex didn't re-release the hats the following year, if ever again. As time went on, some players who kept their party hats stopped playing, further reducing the supply. The hats became a symbol of one's status as an older player, or because they were so rare, as a wealthy one.

“The hats now play a vital role in the RuneScape economy as investments, money placements, deployed items and collectibles,” says Jagex. According to a RuneScape wiki, party hats actually go for more than 2.1 billion Runescape gold. That's just their quoted price, as it's the limit for a single trade on RuneScape's Grand Exchange.

The new 2021 party hats are distinct from the 2001 party hats. These are gold party hats, while the originals were only available in white, blue, red, green, yellow and purple. The Golden Party Hat will symbolize a player's participation in RuneScape's 20th Anniversary event, or something to trade, although they are not automatically as valuable as the originals. Each player can only earn one Gold Party Hat during the event, so they will still be rare, but players are unlikely to throw their hat away this time.

To get a Golden Party Hat, players must collect eight Golden Party Hat Shards and have an active RuneScape membership, which is $11 per month, or less for players who commit to a 12-month Premier Club membership. (Membership can also be purchased with Bonds, which are tradable in-game items like EVE Online's Plex.) Some Shards are gained by completing discrete tasks, such as completing the "Once Upon a Time in Gielinor" anniversary quest or buy one for 30 million gold. Others are random drops that occur while players are training skills or doing other activities.

Jagex says a breakdown protection system should prevent anyone actively playing RuneScape from being left hatless before the event ends on January 3.

“If you continue to train a skill or complete scrolling clues, the chances of getting a shard increase exponentially,” the developer says. “Essentially, our intention is that players who are actively playing during this event will be able to make their own hats without too much worry.”

That doesn't stop some players from grinding up Shard drops as quickly as possible, for example by spending a morning cooking thousands of sailfish. Another player on the RuneScape forum said they killed "2,000 abyssal demons" without seeing a Combat Shard drop, while another reported getting the Combat Shard after fighting dark beasts for six hours. We all party in different ways.