Water Lilies

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Water Lilies is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 2 intermediates — Growth Formula Gamma ×5 and Quicksilver ×5 — which resolve to 5 distinct raw materials totalling 29 units, plus 29 crystals.

That bill outweighs 10,170 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,354 of the 1,591 Alchemist ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 9 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 20 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 25 Water Shard and 4 Lightning Shard.

Every step is Alchemist work, from a Lv 1 intermediate up to the Lv 41 finish, so one class covers the whole chain.

3 of the 5 raw materials match a gathering node, none of them timed; the other 2 come from vendors, drops or content this site does not track.

Of the intermediates, Growth Formula Gamma has the widest use: 31 recipes call for it, spanning four of the eight crafting classes.