Decorated Iron Scutum

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Decorated Iron Scutum is 4 crafting steps deep and needs 5 intermediates — Iron Scutum ×1, Toad Leather ×1, Iron Rivets ×5 and 2 others — which resolve to 3 distinct raw materials totalling 29 units, plus 29 crystals.

That bill outweighs 10,170 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,028 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 1 recipe nests deeper.

Only 7 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 22 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 14 Fire Shard, 8 Ice Shard and 7 Earth Shard.

The chain crosses three disciplines — Armorer to Lv 34, Leatherworker to Lv 26 and Blacksmith to Lv 18 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

2 of the 3 raw materials match a gathering node, none of them timed; the other 1 comes from vendors, drops or content this site does not track.

Of the intermediates, Iron Ingot has the widest use: 113 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.