Rarefied High Steel Thermal Alembic

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Rarefied High Steel Thermal Alembic is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 2 intermediates — High Steel Nugget ×3 and Koppranickel Nugget ×1 — which resolve to 3 distinct raw materials totalling 20 units, plus 18 crystals.

That bill outweighs 7,876 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 757 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 6 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 12 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 9 Fire Crystal, 3 Earth Crystal, 3 Ice Crystal and 1 other kind.

The chain crosses three disciplines — Armorer to Lv 62, Blacksmith to Lv 61 and Goldsmith to Lv 61 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

All 3 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.