Golden party hats have now appeared in the MMORPG Runescape, which you have to farming with relative difficulty. These hats are actually completely useless, but they can become valuable in the future. Because there were such hats 20 years ago, they are now worth billions in Runescape gold.

What kind of hats are these?

The "Golden party hat" in Runescape are cosmetic headgear given out to celebrate Runescape's 20th anniversary. The hats are only available until January 3.

To get such a party hat you need 8 shards: To get these shards, the players mainly need luck and time. The shards are there when you improve your fighting, art or collecting skills and in many different ways: you can just buy a shard for about 30 million gold.

The item is useless in itself, but is seen as an exciting investment in the future, as such hats were already available in 2001. They are now worth billions in gold.

In 2001, many people simply threw away their party hats - today it would be worth billions of gold

What about the old hats? In 2001, party hats came into play, which were handed out at a Christmas event.

As the developer Jagex explains, the hats must be "worthless and disposable". There was no benefit in wearing such a hat. Many players would have broken their hats after the event. But because Jagex stopped giving free hats in 2002 and never after, the hats became such sought-after collectibles: They indicated that someone had been playing Runescape for years.

Over the past 20 years, hats have become rarer as people stop using MMORPG and take their hats to the digital grave. These hats are now worth 2.1 billion gold and play a "critical role in Runescape's economy," as Jagex puts it.

How many hours of farming players for the new hats? The Runescape players are currently investing a lot of time in getting the individual shards. The time investment is far apart if you read the forum:

One says he's been picking locks for 2 hours and still hasn't got a shard.

Another says he killed 2000 demons and found nothing.

A third report that he got his "battle shard" after 6 hours. It was probably worth it.

That's behind it: It's pretty unlikely that the new hats will be of any real value, because everyone expects them. The original hats are so valuable because only a few came up with the idea that something could be valuable and stored the hats somewhere. Today we know that such limited event items increase in value, so many will pick up their hats - and they will then remain relatively worthless.

But Jagex must be congratulated: the party hats are a good idea to keep players entertained for hours with "old content that is in the game anyway".