Independent fan guide. Details reflect the launch patch (v1.0.3) and cite official sources; if the game updates, in-game text always wins.
01The cosmetic aisle, sorted by utility
Every shop in a job sim has one aisle that looks like filler. In Worming from Home it is the one with the hats and the desk toys, and the running joke is that almost none of it is filler. The d20 is an achievement dispenser with a daily cooldown. The three dice are keyboard tools. The radio is the only clock on the desk. One hat quietly raises your income by ten percent once the right perk is unlocked. This guide walks the cosmetic shelf and sorts it by what each item actually does for a worm with a quota.
A quick note on sourcing, because the hat economy has a strange gap in it. The Steam page plays up hat shopping, but in the launch-week footage we verified, the AzureBay playthrough and both major reviews included, nobody buys a hat at the shop. Hats arrive through WormTok, the smartphone app where every achievement has a claimable reward. The store blurb and the observed game do not quite agree, so this guide treats shop-sold hats as unverified and shop-bought hats as an open question.
Completionists should read this aisle differently again. Expensive Taste, the achievement for purchasing every item in the shop, sits at 6.0 percent of players. Give Me Attention, for pushing every possible item onto the ground, sits at 7.2 percent, and the developer has confirmed on record which items count. Trinkets are not decoration. They are checklist entries with physics attached, and several of them pay out twice.
02The hat situation: store blurb versus reality
The store page invites you to buy a bunch of hats, in so many words, and the impulse is understandable. The reality in footage is more interesting: hats are earned, not shopped. The smartphone's WormTok app lists a claimable reward for nearly everything the game tracks, and headgear is scattered all over that list. A hat arrives because you did something strange at the desk, not because you clicked purchase.
Here is the verified lineup. The Beverage Hat is the famous one, with a hydration requirement attached. A neck bow arrives through the smartphone. A tie shows up as a reward connected to messaging a coworker, which is the most office way imaginable to acquire formal wear. The propeller cap pays out of the Wormhole platforming challenge, and the reviewers who finished it clearly consider it the crown of the collection. Two more hats sit at the odd end: one tied to defacing a picture, one to a bank milestone at 100 dollars.
Whether a hat can also be bought directly from the shop, and whether such a purchase would count toward Expensive Taste, is unverified. No playthrough we found shows a hat being bought, and none of the community price lists include one. The practical budgeting rule is simple: plan to earn hats with deeds, not dollars. Every verified path to headgear runs through the reward app, and the reward app runs on achievements.
03Every hat we can verify
Start with the Beverage Hat, the only hat in the game with an achievement stitched into the brim. Fill a cup at the water cooler, drink while wearing the hat, and the game awards A Thirsty, Thirsty Worm, which 20.4 percent of players own. Roughly one worm in five is hydrating correctly, and the game keeps count. Everything you need is on the desk from the first morning: hat claimed, cup filled, drink taken, achievement landed.
The rest of the lineup is cosmetic until the Dress to Impress perk enters the picture, and that perk is the subject of the next section. Until then, collect for style. The neck bow comes through the smartphone and looks exactly as absurd as it sounds on a creature with no neck worth naming. The tie, again, is the messaging reward. The propeller cap is the Wormhole's payout and the reviewers' favorite; both major reviews give it top billing among the things you can put on a worm.
The final two hats are the strange ones. One is tied to defacing a picture, a mischief the game tracks and, apparently, rewards in fabric. The other is tied to the 100 dollar bank milestone, which players report also pays out the RGB mouse. Same milestone, hat and mouse both. If you want the full set, the method stays the same throughout: claim every reward on the smartphone as you go, because hats arrive sideways from achievements you were chasing anyway.
04Dress to Impress: why any hat is a raise
Here is why the hat shelf is secretly economic. Deep in the Financial Insight tree, the one you feed by reading in the nook, sits a perk called Dress to Impress: ten percent more income while wearing any hat. Any hat. The free neck bow from your phone qualifies. The tie from a coworker chat qualifies. A worm in any headgear at all is a worm earning more per task, and the game never asks which one.
Ten percent sounds small until you stack it against a working week. Task pay, trading gains and bonuses are exactly the kind of money that enjoys a flat raise, and the perk applies for as long as the hat stays on. Across the days a full run takes, Dress to Impress quietly pays for every other item on the trinket shelf, including, eventually, the dirt.
The practical order of operations: claim a hat early so one is on standby, then read your way toward the perk. Sessions at the nook work best after 9 p.m., and the same tree pays out stock perks, spreadsheet raises and eventually Book Worm at 34.6 percent. The hat is the cheapest piece of financial infrastructure in the game, and it costs nothing but a claim on an app you already own.
05The d20 and the dice: ritual and tool
The d20 is the most productive object on the desk. Roll it once a day; a natural 20 pays Stroke of Luck, which 26.9 percent of players own, making it one of the most commonly unlocked achievements in the game. A natural 1 pays too, just not in pride. The smartphone's reward app hands out a keyboard skin on a natural 20 or a natural 1 alike, which means the die cannot actually lose.
The three smaller dice have day jobs. Formatting shortcuts are Ctrl combinations, and a worm cannot hold Ctrl while also being the thing headbashing B. The community answer is to park a die on the Ctrl key as a paperweight, then bump B, I, C or V as needed. Arrow keys keep working with Ctrl pinned; typing does not, so lift the die before word tasks. A fully upgraded keyboard eventually removes the need for the trick entirely, which surprises owners of expensive keyboards everywhere.
Treat the dice as furniture with a function. One die lives next to Ctrl for the whole work week. The d20 stays within morning throwing distance, and its roll becomes part of the opening routine alongside voicemail and the calendar. None of this is required to finish the story. All of it compounds, and all of it is free, which on this desk is the rarest quality an item can have.
06The radio, the cradle and the rest of the shelf
The radio looks like decoration and is actually infrastructure. It is the only object on the desk that displays the actual time, and time gates your two efficiency windows: gym training pays out best before 10 a.m., and reading at the nook works best after 9 p.m. It also carries lo-fi jazz and classical channels, which is precisely the soundtrack a financial worm deserves, and it is breakable, which 18.7 percent of players have converted into I Work Better in Silence.
The Newton's cradle is the shelf's showpiece. One review went out of its way to call its physics physically accurate, which for a game built on a ragdoll worm headbashing a keyboard is a quiet flex. The drum-set figurine rounds out the aisle; no verified mechanic attaches to it, and it appears to exist on the principle that a desk this serious deserves one piece of pure decoration.
The ladybug technically lives in this aisle too. Say hi and the game awards A New Friend at 20.1 percent; the secrets guide gives her the attention she is owed. One completion note belongs here as well: high-shelf items are on the developer-confirmed list of things that count for Give Me Attention, so the shelf you decorate is also the shelf you will eventually have to shove onto the floor. Decorate with that day in mind.
07Dirt, the frog, Kevin and the big-ticket end
Then the shelf gets ambitious. The pile of dirt costs 2,000 dollars and arrives three days after purchase, which makes it the only shop item with a shipping time. When it lands, you can commune with it for God I Love Dirt at 20.3 percent. You sleep in a plant pot. Of course you can commune with dirt; the game is simply charging two grand for the privilege and making you wait for delivery.
The frog costs nothing and pays a cursor. Grab it, or scan it with the webcam, and the smartphone hands over the frog cursor, which the community has adopted as the correct way to point at spreadsheets. Its sibling reward, the Tippy cursor, comes from bothering someone serious. Between the two of them, the desk's small animals function as a cursor shop with a capture mechanic instead of a checkout.
Kevin is the big one: 10,000 dollars, the priciest item in the shop, and a documented trick repertoire. The developer's own framing is that Kevin is required for nothing except joy and one S-rank story, and the story is real. A player held Kevin up to the interview webcam for the scan and came away with an S grade, the Absolute Expertise achievement that only 11.4 percent manage. Save Kevin for last, then show him to Steve.
08What counts: Expensive Taste and Give Me Attention
Two achievements turn the entire shop into a checklist. Expensive Taste, at 6.0 percent, wants every item purchased, and the shop helps you track it: bought items stay listed as SOLD, so the store screen doubles as your punch card. Whether hats factor in depends on whether any are actually purchasable there, which, as above, no footage or community price list confirms. Keep that gap in mind when you plan the final shopping spree.
Give Me Attention, at 7.2 percent, wants every possible item pushed onto the ground, and the developer answered a forum thread about exactly what counts. Papers, printed money and interns do not count. The phone, the radio, the cups and the high-shelf items do. The accompanying advice is to buy everything first, and to expect the achievement to potentially pop on the next launch rather than instantly.
Run the two as one project. Buy the shop empty for Expensive Taste, then conduct the great desk collapse for Give Me Attention, then use the menu's Reset Objects to put your working life back in order. One warning carried over from the bug threads: never press Reset Objects while the printer is printing, or the print button can vanish with the job half-done.
09The trinket cheat sheet
The full shelf at a glance, sorted by how much work each item does for you rather than by price. Where a price is pinned down by official screenshots or verified playthroughs, it is listed; where the community has only seen the item without a confirmed number, the table says so instead of guessing. If the hidden utility column surprises you anywhere, that is roughly the point of this guide: the cosmetic aisle has been carrying the economy this whole time.
| Item | Price or how you get it | What it secretly does |
|---|---|---|
| Beverage Hat | WormTok reward (verified) | Drink water while wearing it: A Thirsty, Thirsty Worm (20.4%) |
| Neck bow | Smartphone (WormTok) | Cosmetic; any hat activates Dress to Impress |
| Tie | Reward tied to messaging a coworker | Cosmetic; any hat activates Dress to Impress |
| Propeller cap | WormTok reward via the Wormhole | The reviewers' favorite headgear |
| Bank-milestone hat | Reported at the $100 bank milestone | Cosmetic; the milestone also pays the RGB mouse |
| d20 | On the desk from day one | Daily roll; Nat 20 = Stroke of Luck; skin on a 20 or a 1 |
| Three dice | On the desk from day one | Park one on Ctrl for formatting shortcuts |
| Radio | On the desk from day one | Shows the time; lo-fi and classical; breakable achievement |
| Newton's cradle | Shop shelf; price unverified | Physically accurate, per reviews; pure shelf presence |
| Drum-set figurine | Shop shelf; price unverified | No verified mechanic; decoration only |
| Ladybug | Lives on the desk | Say hi: A New Friend (20.1%) |
| Pile of dirt | $2,000, delivered in 3 days | Commune: God I Love Dirt (20.3%) |
| Frog | Lives on the desk | Grab or scan it for the frog cursor |
| Kevin | $10,000 | Does tricks; S-rank interview prop for one player |
10Spending order for a trinket budget
Priorities, in order, because the shelf is fun and the story is not optional. Mission purchases come first: the L-shaped desk at 1,000 dollars unlocks trading and the promotion chain, and the webcam at 3,000 and the soundboard must wait for Steve's phone call, since buying either before the game asks can soft-lock your objectives. The trinket shelf lives in the gap between mandatory purchases and endgame surplus. Most of it can wait, and almost none of it should be bought before the desk.
The cheap wins are front-loaded, though. The Reading Nook costs about 10 dollars and starts the perk tree that eventually contains Dress to Impress. The dice tricks are free. The d20 ritual is free. The ladybug and the frog are free. Your first 2,000 surplus dollars have an obvious destination in the dirt pile, partly for the achievement and partly because nothing else in the shop comes with a delivery date.
Kevin is the victory lap. By the time 10,000 dollars is a rounding error, you are deep in the endgame, possibly prepping the interview, and the most expensive item in the shop becomes both a joke and, if the one documented S-rank story is anything to go by, legitimate interview equipment. The shop guide covers the serious purchases; the smartphone guide maps every reward claim. This aisle, meanwhile, keeps quietly paying you the whole way through.