Iron Gauntlets

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Iron Gauntlets is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Iron Plate ×2, Iron Rings ×1 and Iron Ingot ×5 — which resolve to 1 distinct raw material totalling 15 units, plus 10 crystals.

That bill outweighs 6,735 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 616 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 2 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 8 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 5 Fire Shard, 4 Ice Shard and 1 Earth Shard.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Armorer to Lv 20 and Blacksmith to Lv 16 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

Its single raw material is gathered, and no spot for it 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.