What rewards aren't worth the effort?

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A gauntlet of fiendish bosses. Horrible traps and puzzles solved in an instanced format, with no chance for other parties to help you. A collection of dangerous encounters and perilous chances with your characters, in which a single death would mean undoing hours of work. All of that work for... a cosmetic helm?

While Final Fantasy XI has some brutally difficult bosses, they drop powerful rewards. But even then, sometimes you might look at the rewards they drop versus the slightly weaker rewards available elsewhere and decide that the effort is just too much. It's not that the rewards are bad; it's that the rewards don't match up to the strategy and careful play required to have a chance.

So when have you run into rewards that don't feel like they're worth the effort it would take to obtain them? Is it a matter of too much time or too much challenge for too little benefit?

TH