Adamantite Helm of Fending

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Adamantite Helm of Fending is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Adamantite Nugget ×2, Dragon Leather ×1 and Grade 1 Vitality Dissolvent ×1 — which resolve to 8 distinct raw materials totalling 25 units, plus 29 crystals.

That bill outweighs 9,313 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 922 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 10 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 19 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 10 Earth Crystal, 10 Fire Crystal, 5 Ice Crystal and 1 other kind.

The chain crosses four disciplines — Armorer to Lv 58, Blacksmith to Lv 58, Leatherworker to Lv 56 and Alchemist to Lv 54 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

4 of the 8 raw materials come out of the ground, and 3 of them are time-gated: Adamantite Ore (0:00, 2:00, 6:00, 10:00, 12:00, 14:00, 18:00, 22:00), Darksteel Ore (1:00) and 1 other. The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 4 Eorzean hours, about 12 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Adamantite Nugget has the widest use: 79 recipes call for it, spanning six of the eight crafting classes.