Chromite Shield ★★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Chromite Shield is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 6 intermediates — Chromite Ingot ×1, Gazelle Leather ×1, Grade 2 Reisui of Vitality ×1 and 3 others — which resolve to 13 distinct raw materials totalling 33 units, plus 31 crystals.

That bill outweighs 10,907 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,153 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 4 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 27 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 5 Earth Crystal, 5 Fire Crystal, 5 Water Crystal and 6 other kinds.

The chain crosses five disciplines — Armorer to Lv 70, Alchemist to Lv 70, Blacksmith to Lv 70, Carpenter to Lv 70 and Leatherworker to Lv 68 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

8 of the 13 raw materials come out of the ground, and 3 of them are time-gated: Chromite Ore (10:00, 22:00), Hallowed Basil (6:00, 18:00) and 1 other. The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 8 Eorzean hours, about 23 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Chromite Ingot has the widest use: 121 recipes call for it, spanning six of the eight crafting classes.