The golden hammer is a reward from using a golden cracker on another player. This item was released on 20 December2010. It has two right-click options for emotes: Brandish (2009) and Spin (2010). These are the years in which Jagex won the Golden Joystick awards. New players prior to 31 August2011 received the cracker in their bank and were greeted with a message explaining what the item celebrated; however, an update has removed the message. New accounts may still retrieve the cracker from Diango or Ianto.
The hammer can be wielded and used to train Smithing by using it on bars, Construction, and Crafting (to repair the Blast Furnace). It saved the player an additional inventory slot, since a regular hammer cannot be wielded. However, since the introduction of the tool belt in December2011, the usefulness of the golden hammer has gone down, since the regular hammer can be added to the tool belt. Its usefulness has also gone down because of the release of the crystal hammer, especially in conjunction with Invention. The hammer cannot be used at barbarian assault.
If a player loses their golden hammer, it can be regained as a golden cracker by speaking to Diango near Draynor Village.
The head of the hammer appears to be a game controller and the handle appears to be a joystick.
The hammer can also be used to open the Bandos door in the God Wars Dungeon.
Despite being a hammer, it cannot be used to smith a Dragonfire shield. However, if it is equipped, it will appear as though it is being used.
The actions of the golden hammer cannot be used in the Deathcon II Citadel - Theatre; doing so will make this message appear in the chatbox: You can only perform theatre sitting emotes in The Horsemen's theatre.. If the player sits, this message will appear in the chatbox: You can't do that while sitting down.
The Golden hammer is one of the few mauls available to free-to-play players, along with the god banner (29 May 2013).
If a cosmetic override for two-handed melee weapons is activated in the Customisation interface, the emotes for the Golden hammer can still be activated, but the emote will use the override's model.
If the Golden hammer was keepsaked before the July2018 update, it would no longer be a keepsaked item when the update happened. The keepsake key was not refunded.
Keepsaking and using the golden hammer as an override will not change the hammer model used when smithing.