Noble Gold

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Noble Gold is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 7 intermediates — Aurum Regis Nugget ×2, Hardsilver Ingot ×2, Chrysolite ×1 and 4 others — which resolve to 11 distinct raw materials totalling 49 units, plus 51 crystals.

That bill outweighs 12,749 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,528 of the 1,591 Alchemist ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 3 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 48 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 43 Wind Crystal, 5 Water Crystal, 2 Water Cluster and 1 other kind.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Alchemist to Lv 60 and Goldsmith to Lv 60 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

9 of the 11 raw materials come out of the ground, and one of them is time-gated: Gold Ore (9:00). That window comes round once per Eorzean day, every 70 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.