The Evening Star ★★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one The Evening Star is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 7 intermediates — Darksteel Nugget ×3, Electrum Ingot ×1, Enchanted Rose Gold Ink ×1 and 4 others — which resolve to 9 distinct raw materials totalling 46 units, plus 29 crystals.

That bill outweighs 12,540 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 2,009 of the 2,216 Goldsmith ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 2 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 27 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 9 Fire Crystal, 7 Wind Shard, 6 Wind Crystal and 4 other kinds.

The chain crosses three disciplines — Goldsmith to Lv 50, Alchemist to Lv 50 and Blacksmith to Lv 50 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

6 of the 9 raw materials come out of the ground, and 3 of them are time-gated: Darksteel Ore (1:00), Gold Ore (9:00) and 1 other. The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 16 Eorzean hours, about 47 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Electrum Ingot has the widest use: 234 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.