Aeolian Scimitar ★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Aeolian Scimitar is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 2 intermediates — Basilisk Whetstone ×1 and Darksteel Nugget ×1 — which resolve to 3 distinct raw materials totalling 5 units, plus 13 crystals.

That bill outweighs 4,201 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 450 of the 1,932 Blacksmith ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 5 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 8 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 6 Fire Crystal, 5 Wind Shard and 2 Earth Crystal.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Blacksmith to Lv 50 and Goldsmith to Lv 40 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

2 of the 3 raw materials come out of the ground, and one of them is time-gated: Darksteel Ore (1:00). That window comes round once per Eorzean day, every 70 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Darksteel Nugget has the widest use: 121 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.