Steel Barbut

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Steel Barbut is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 5 intermediates — Iron Plate ×1, Steel Plate ×1, Steel Rivets ×1 and 2 others — which resolve to 2 distinct raw materials totalling 18 units, plus 24 crystals.

That bill outweighs 7,380 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 694 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 7 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 17 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 13 Fire Shard, 8 Ice Shard and 3 Earth Shard.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Armorer to Lv 35 and Blacksmith to Lv 29 — 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.