Bronze Alembic

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Bronze Alembic is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Bronze Plate ×1, Bronze Rivets ×1 and Bronze Ingot ×3 — which resolve to 2 distinct raw materials totalling 9 units, plus 7 crystals.

That bill outweighs 5,492 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 519 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 2 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 5 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 4 Fire Shard, 2 Ice Shard and 1 Earth Shard.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Armorer to Lv 3 and Blacksmith to Lv 3 — 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.

Of the intermediates, Bronze Ingot has the widest use: 76 recipes call for it, spanning six of the eight crafting classes.