Square Maple Shield

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Square Maple Shield is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Bronze Rivets ×2, Maple Lumber ×1 and Bronze Ingot ×2 — which resolve to 3 distinct raw materials totalling 9 units, plus 7 crystals.

That bill outweighs 5,492 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 549 of the 1,552 Carpenter ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 2 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 5 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 4 Fire Shard, 2 Wind Shard and 1 Ice Shard.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Carpenter to Lv 5 and Blacksmith to Lv 3 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

All 3 raw materials are gathered, and not one of their spots is timed, so nothing in the tree waits on the Eorzean clock.

Of the intermediates, Bronze Ingot has the widest use: 76 recipes call for it, spanning six of the eight crafting classes.