High Steel File

Taken all the way down to base materials, one High Steel File is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 4 intermediates — High Steel Ingot ×2, Ruby Cotton Cloth ×1, Ruby Cotton Yarn ×3 and 1 other — which resolve to 4 distinct raw materials totalling 22 units, plus 21 crystals.

That bill outweighs 8,402 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 917 of the 1,932 Blacksmith ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 6 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 15 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 15 Fire Crystal, 3 Earth Crystal and 3 Lightning Crystal.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Blacksmith to Lv 62 and Weaver to Lv 62 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

All 4 raw materials are gathered, and not one of their spots is timed, so nothing in the tree waits on the Eorzean clock.

Of the intermediates, High Steel Nugget has the widest use: 133 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.