Heavy Steel Gauntlets

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Heavy Steel Gauntlets is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Steel Plate ×3, Steel Rings ×1 and Steel Ingot ×7 — which resolve to 2 distinct raw materials totalling 21 units, plus 33 crystals.

That bill outweighs 8,152 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 780 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 7 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 26 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 16 Ice Shard, 14 Fire Shard and 3 Earth Shard.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Armorer to Lv 34 and Blacksmith to Lv 26 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

Both raw materials are gathered, and no spot for either 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.