Chromite Helm of Fending ★★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Chromite Helm of Fending is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 6 intermediates — Chromite Ingot ×2, Grade 2 Reisui of Vitality ×1, Palladium Ingot ×1 and 3 others — which resolve to 16 distinct raw materials totalling 47 units, plus 41 crystals.

That bill outweighs 12,643 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,331 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 4 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 37 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 11 Wind Crystal, 10 Fire Crystal, 6 Earth Cluster and 5 other kinds.

The chain crosses four disciplines — Armorer to Lv 70, Alchemist to Lv 70, Blacksmith to Lv 70 and Goldsmith to Lv 70 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

11 of the 16 raw materials come out of the ground, and 4 of them are time-gated: Chromite Ore (10:00, 22:00), Hallowed Basil (6:00, 18:00) and 2 others. The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 6 Eorzean hours, about 18 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Palladium Nugget has the widest use: 129 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.