It is more expensive (typically) than buying the tools to fix. You’re basically trading time for money when you’re fixing things at the armorer.
When you’re walking around with 20k+ cash though, the amount requested is a lot smaller than the high end contract payouts. Saw a 1.1k advance + 4k completion orc mission that I skipped because I knew it would involve a warlord + 8 warriors, and I only have one heavy armor character at the moment.
Necro-savants are basically reskinned vampires. They basically are the reason that Fast Adaptation is a requirement, by virtue of their high melee defense (on an account of basically starting with 70 hp with basically no armor, which means two hits with a 1-handed weapon or one hit with a two-hander will instantly trigger Nine Lives).