Neo-Ishgardian Top of Fending ★★★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Neo-Ishgardian Top of Fending is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 4 intermediates — Cobalt Alloy Ingot ×2, Duskcourt Cloth ×2, Grade 3 Vitality Alkahest ×2 and 1 other — which resolve to 11 distinct raw materials totalling 36 units, plus 31 crystals.

That bill outweighs 11,383 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,196 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 4 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 27 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 7 Earth Crystal, 6 Earth Cluster, 6 Lightning Cluster and 4 other kinds.

The chain crosses five disciplines — Armorer to Lv 80, Alchemist to Lv 80, Blacksmith to Lv 80, Weaver to Lv 80 and Leatherworker to Lv 78 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

5 of the 11 raw materials come out of the ground, and 3 of them are time-gated: Duskblooms (4:00, 16:00), Fireheart Cobalt (2:00, 14:00) and 1 other. The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 8 Eorzean hours, about 23 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Sea Swallow Leather has the widest use: 124 recipes call for it, spanning six of the eight crafting classes.