Cobalt Pliers

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Cobalt Pliers is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Cobalt Ingot ×2, Cobalt Rivets ×1 and Shark Oil ×1 — which resolve to 4 distinct raw materials totalling 8 units, plus 30 crystals.

That bill outweighs 5,254 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 529 of the 1,932 Blacksmith ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 10 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 20 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 20 Fire Shard, 5 Earth Shard and 5 Water Shard.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Blacksmith to Lv 44 and Alchemist to Lv 41 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

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, Cobalt Ingot has the widest use: 145 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.