Thermal Alembic

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Thermal Alembic is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 4 intermediates — Cobalt Plate ×1, Cobalt Rivets ×1, Iron Ingot ×1 and 1 other — which resolve to 2 distinct raw materials totalling 12 units, plus 38 crystals.

That bill outweighs 6,221 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 580 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 12 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 26 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 21 Fire Shard, 11 Ice Shard and 6 Earth Shard.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Armorer to Lv 50 and Blacksmith to Lv 43 — 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, Cobalt Ingot has the widest use: 145 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.