Dealing with the Tough Stuff
Location
Required Items
Rewards
What the allowance actually buys
One allowance here buys 26,790 EXP, which places it 6th of the 6 Lv 45 Armorer tradecraft leves that record EXP. The best of them, Parasitic Win, returns 152,230 EXP for the same allowance, 468% more.
Across that rung the return runs from 26,790 EXP to 152,230 EXP per allowance — 5 distinct figures spanning 468%, so the wrong pick leaves 125,440 EXP of the allowance unspent.
On whether to wait: the best Lv 50 Armorer tradecraft leve returns 211,350 EXP per allowance, 39% more than the best on this rung, while the Lv 40 rung behind tops out at 102,600 EXP.
At Lv 45 this data holds 52 leves paying EXP across 2 categories: the 48 Tradecraft ones average 98,250 EXP per allowance, the 4 Fieldcraft ones 733,026 EXP, which puts this leve 73% below its own category's average.
Cobalt Ingot ×1 is a Lv 42 Blacksmith recipe, a single step, costing 3 units of raw material and 5 crystals.
Handing that in returns 8,930 EXP and 71 gil for every unit of raw material the order swallows.
The record carries a repeats value of 2. This site reads that as 2 further turn-ins on the same leve — an assumption, because the source data defines no meaning for the field — which would put the ceiling at 80,370 EXP and 636 gil for the 1 allowance it costs, or 80,370 EXP per allowance.