Adamantite Lorica of Fending

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Adamantite Lorica of Fending is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 4 intermediates — Adamantite Nugget ×4, Grade 1 Vitality Dissolvent ×2, Adamantite Rivets ×1 and 1 other — which resolve to 7 distinct raw materials totalling 35 units, plus 37 crystals.

That bill outweighs 11,223 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,179 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 3 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 34 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 25 Fire Crystal, 5 Earth Crystal, 4 Water Crystal and 2 other kinds.

The chain crosses four disciplines — Armorer to Lv 60, Blacksmith to Lv 58, Leatherworker to Lv 58 and Alchemist to Lv 54 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

4 of the 7 raw materials come out of the ground, and 3 of them are time-gated: Adamantite Ore (0:00, 2:00, 6:00, 10:00, 12:00, 14:00, 18:00, 22:00), Darksteel Ore (1:00) and 1 other. The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 4 Eorzean hours, about 12 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Amphiptere Leather has the widest use: 108 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.