Brass Knives

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Brass Knives is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Ash Lumber ×1, Brass Ingot ×1 and Bronze Ingot ×1 — which resolve to 4 distinct raw materials totalling 9 units, plus 5 crystals.

That bill outweighs 5,492 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 597 of the 1,932 Blacksmith ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 2 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 3 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 2 Fire Shard, 2 Wind Shard and 1 Earth Shard.

The chain crosses three disciplines — Blacksmith to Lv 16, Goldsmith to Lv 14 and Carpenter to Lv 10 — 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, Brass Ingot has the widest use: 94 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.