Hive Barding ★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Hive Barding is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Adamantite Nugget ×4, Dhalmel Leather ×2 and Aurum Regis Nugget ×1 — which resolve to 7 distinct raw materials totalling 39 units, plus 36 crystals.

That bill outweighs 11,756 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,247 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 3 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 33 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 20 Fire Crystal, 8 Earth Crystal, 5 Wind Crystal and 2 other kinds.

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

5 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, Aurum Regis Nugget has the widest use: 185 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.