Nightsteel Helm of Maiming ★★★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Nightsteel Helm of Maiming is 4 crafting steps deep and needs 9 intermediates — Nightsteel Ingot ×2, Bloodhempen Cloth ×1, Grade 3 Reisui of Strength ×1 and 6 others — which resolve to 16 distinct raw materials totalling 42 units, plus 33 crystals.

That bill outweighs 12,044 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,279 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 1 recipe nests deeper.

Only 4 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 29 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 11 Fire Crystal, 4 Earth Cluster, 4 Fire Cluster and 6 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 61 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

11 of the 16 raw materials come out of the ground, and 3 of them are time-gated: Gyr Abanian Spring Water (10:00, 22:00), Nightsteel Ore (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, High Steel Nugget has the widest use: 133 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.