@connor, that relates to your attack strength. You can still complete one that says that.
@blind, there are specific quests which drop crystals and tell you about it. Nobs are random (~.83% chance every success) and only give one line of "You found a nobility point!" along the bottom, so you may not have noticed if you did get one.
so far in quests ive mastered about 40ish and have gotten 5 nob and 15-21 crystals. they started as 1 bonus then 3 bonus almost every other quest mastery.