Imperial Operative Hat ★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Imperial Operative Hat is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 4 intermediates — Undyed Woolen Cloth ×2, Rose Gold Nugget ×1, Silk Thread ×1 and 1 other — which resolve to 5 distinct raw materials totalling 11 units, plus 21 crystals.

That bill outweighs 5,999 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 737 of the 1,968 Weaver ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 5 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 16 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 10 Lightning Shard, 6 Lightning Crystal and 5 Wind Crystal.

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

4 of the 5 raw materials come out of the ground, and 2 of them are time-gated: Gold Ore (9:00) and Silkworm Cocoon (1:00). The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 16 Eorzean hours, about 47 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Rose Gold Nugget has the widest use: 179 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.