Steel Pliers

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Steel Pliers is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Steel Ingot ×2, Linseed Oil ×1 and Steel Rivets ×1 — which resolve to 3 distinct raw materials totalling 8 units, plus 17 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 7 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 10 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 11 Fire Shard, 3 Earth Shard and 3 Water Shard.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Blacksmith to Lv 35 and Alchemist to Lv 29 — 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, Steel Ingot has the widest use: 125 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.