Chromite Armor of Fending ★★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Chromite Armor of Fending is 4 crafting steps deep and needs 9 intermediates — Chromite Ingot ×3, Grade 2 Reisui of Vitality ×2, Steppe Serge ×2 and 6 others — which resolve to 19 distinct raw materials totalling 69 units, plus 64 crystals.

That bill outweighs 13,278 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,404 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 1 recipe nests deeper.

Only 4 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 60 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 15 Fire Crystal, 11 Wind Crystal, 10 Lightning Crystal and 7 other kinds.

The chain crosses five disciplines — Armorer to Lv 70, Alchemist to Lv 70, Blacksmith to Lv 70, Goldsmith to Lv 70 and Weaver to Lv 66 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

13 of the 19 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.