Lift of the Vortex ★★★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Lift of the Vortex is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 2 intermediates — Gold Ingot ×3 and Enchanted Gold Ink ×1 — which resolve to 8 distinct raw materials totalling 27 units, plus 24 crystals.

That bill outweighs 9,763 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,605 of the 2,216 Goldsmith ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 12 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 12 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 12 Wind Crystal, 6 Wind Cluster, 3 Fire Cluster and 1 other kind.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Goldsmith to Lv 50 and Alchemist to Lv 50 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

3 of the 8 raw materials come out of the ground, and 3 of them are time-gated: Gold Ore (9:00), Gold Sand (5:00) and 1 other. The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 19 Eorzean hours, about 55 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Gold Ingot has the widest use: 184 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.