Catalyst ★★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Catalyst is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 6 intermediates — Grade 2 Intelligence Alkahest ×3, Sandalwood Lumber ×2, Onyx ×1 and 3 others — which resolve to 11 distinct raw materials totalling 36 units, plus 38 crystals.

That bill outweighs 11,383 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,184 of the 1,552 Carpenter ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 4 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 34 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 14 Wind Crystal, 8 Wind Cluster, 6 Ice Cluster and 4 other kinds.

The chain crosses four disciplines — Carpenter to Lv 80, Alchemist to Lv 80, Blacksmith to Lv 80 and Goldsmith to Lv 80 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

6 of the 11 raw materials come out of the ground, and 4 of them are time-gated: Prismstone (4:00, 16:00), Raw Onyx (0:00, 12:00) and 2 others. The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 6 Eorzean hours, about 18 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Tungsten Steel Ingot has the widest use: 113 recipes call for it, spanning six of the eight crafting classes.