Cobalt Plate

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Cobalt Plate is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 1 intermediate — Cobalt Ingot ×2 — which resolves to 2 distinct raw materials totalling 6 units, plus 15 crystals.

That bill outweighs 4,542 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 466 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 5 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 10 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 10 Fire Shard and 5 Ice Shard.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Armorer to Lv 43 and Blacksmith to Lv 42 — 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.

Cobalt Plate is itself consumed by 53 further recipes, spanning four of the eight crafting classes.