Mega-Potion of Strength

Taken all the way down to base materials, a batch of 3 Mega-Potion of Strength is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 1 intermediate — Shark Oil ×1 — which resolves to 4 distinct raw materials totalling 4 units, plus 16 crystals.

That bill outweighs 3,935 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 746 of the 1,591 Alchemist ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 11 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 5 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 11 Water Shard and 5 Lightning Shard.

Every step is Alchemist work, from a Lv 41 intermediate up to the Lv 45 finish, so one class covers the whole chain.

All 4 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, Shark Oil has the widest use: 24 recipes call for it, spanning five of the eight crafting classes.