Imperial Jade Earrings of Fending

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Imperial Jade Earrings of Fending is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Imperial Jade ×2, Grade 1 Reisui of Vitality ×1 and Palladium Nugget ×1 — which resolve to 9 distinct raw materials totalling 20 units, plus 30 crystals.

That bill outweighs 7,876 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,141 of the 2,216 Goldsmith ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 11 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 19 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 21 Wind Crystal, 5 Fire Crystal and 4 Water Crystal.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Goldsmith to Lv 70 and Alchemist to Lv 63 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

All 9 raw materials are gathered, and 2 of them are time-gated: Raw Imperial Jade (6:00, 18:00) and Almandine (0:00). The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 12 Eorzean hours, about 35 real-world minutes.

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