Gold Needle

Taken all the way down to base materials, a batch of 3 Gold Needle is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 1 intermediate — Electrum Ingot ×1 — which resolves to 3 distinct raw materials totalling 6 units, plus 16 crystals.

That bill outweighs 4,542 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 917 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 6 Water Shard, 5 Lightning Shard and 5 Wind Shard.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Alchemist to Lv 46 and Goldsmith to Lv 42 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

1 of the 3 raw materials matches a gathering node, none of them timed; the other 2 come from vendors, drops or content this site does not track.

Of the intermediates, Electrum Ingot has the widest use: 234 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.