Cobalt Joint Plate

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Cobalt Joint Plate is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 1 intermediate — Cobalt Ingot ×1 — which resolves to 2 distinct raw materials totalling 3 units, plus 10 crystals.

That bill outweighs 3,373 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 407 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

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

The chain crosses two disciplines — Armorer to Lv 44 and Blacksmith to Lv 42 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

Both raw materials are gathered, and no spot for either is timed, so nothing in the tree waits on the Eorzean clock.

Cobalt Joint Plate is itself consumed by 23 further recipes, spanning six of the eight crafting classes.