Steel Skillet

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Steel Skillet is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Elm Lumber ×1, Steel Plate ×1 and Steel Ingot ×2 — which resolve to 3 distinct raw materials totalling 9 units, plus 13 crystals.

That bill outweighs 5,492 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 519 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 5 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 8 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 6 Ice Shard, 4 Fire Shard, 2 Earth Shard and 1 other kind.

The chain crosses three disciplines — Armorer to Lv 29, Blacksmith to Lv 26 and Carpenter to Lv 16 — 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, Steel Ingot has the widest use: 125 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.