Initiate's Skillet

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Initiate's Skillet is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Elm Lumber ×1, Iron Plate ×1 and Iron Ingot ×2 — which resolve to 2 distinct raw materials totalling 9 units, plus 6 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 4 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 2 Fire Shard, 2 Ice Shard, 1 Earth Shard and 1 other kind.

The chain crosses three disciplines — Armorer to Lv 18, Blacksmith to Lv 16 and Carpenter to Lv 16 — 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, Iron Ingot has the widest use: 113 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.