Exarchic Axe ★★★★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Exarchic Axe is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 4 intermediates — Duraluminum Ingot ×2, Grade 4 Vitality Alkahest ×2, Solstice Ingot ×2 and 1 other — which resolve to 10 distinct raw materials totalling 37 units, plus 43 crystals.

That bill outweighs 11,564 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,403 of the 1,932 Blacksmith ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 6 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 37 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 15 Fire Cluster, 9 Earth Cluster, 7 Fire Crystal and 3 other kinds.

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

6 of the 10 raw materials come out of the ground, and 3 of them are time-gated: Dolomite (8:00, 20:00), Hard Water (4:00, 16:00) and 1 other. The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 6 Eorzean hours, about 18 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Dwarven Mythril Ingot has the widest use: 168 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.