Ironclad Bronze Buckler

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Ironclad Bronze Buckler is 4 crafting steps deep and needs 5 intermediates — Bronze Buckler ×1, Iron Rivets ×2, Bronze Plate ×1 and 2 others — which resolve to 3 distinct raw materials totalling 18 units, plus 13 crystals.

That bill outweighs 7,380 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 694 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 1 recipe nests deeper.

Only 2 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 11 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 8 Fire Shard, 3 Ice Shard and 2 Earth Shard.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Armorer to Lv 20 and Blacksmith to Lv 18 — 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, Iron Ingot has the widest use: 113 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.