Exarchic Codex ★★★★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Exarchic Codex is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 4 intermediates — Grade 4 Mind Alkahest ×2, Solstice Ingot ×2, Thylacoleo Leather ×2 and 1 other — which resolve to 11 distinct raw materials totalling 37 units, plus 43 crystals.

That bill outweighs 11,564 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,452 of the 1,591 Alchemist 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 12 Wind Cluster, 7 Water Crystal, 6 Earth Cluster and 3 other kinds.

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

6 of the 11 raw materials come out of the ground, and 3 of them are time-gated: Hard Water (4:00, 16:00), Solstice Stone (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, Solstice Ingot has the widest use: 39 recipes call for it, spanning six of the eight crafting classes.