Steel Knives

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Steel Knives is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 2 intermediates — Steel Ingot ×2 and Walnut Lumber ×1 — which resolve to 3 distinct raw materials totalling 9 units, plus 12 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 6 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 6 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 7 Fire Shard, 3 Earth Shard and 2 Wind Shard.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Blacksmith to Lv 30 and Carpenter to Lv 25 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

All 3 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, Walnut Lumber has the widest use: 128 recipes call for it, spanning eight of the eight crafting classes.