Curved Stepping Stones

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Curved Stepping Stones is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 2 intermediates — Mortar ×4 and Distilled Water ×4 — which resolve to 4 distinct raw materials totalling 25 units, plus 15 crystals.

That bill outweighs 9,313 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,507 of the 2,216 Goldsmith ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 7 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 8 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 8 Water Shard, 4 Wind Shard and 3 Fire Shard.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Goldsmith to Lv 33 and Alchemist to Lv 20 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

All 4 raw materials are gathered, and not one of their spots is timed, so nothing in the tree waits on the Eorzean clock.

Of the intermediates, Mortar has the widest use: 140 recipes call for it, spanning six of the eight crafting classes.