Gold Cog

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Gold Cog is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Stonegold Ingot ×2, High Durium Ingot ×1 and Pewter Ingot ×1 — which resolve to 6 distinct raw materials totalling 22 units, plus 43 crystals.

That bill outweighs 8,402 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,234 of the 2,216 Goldsmith ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 15 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 28 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 28 Wind Crystal and 15 Fire Crystal.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Goldsmith to Lv 83 and Blacksmith to Lv 82 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

All 6 raw materials are gathered, and one of them is time-gated: Gold Ore (9:00). That window comes round once per Eorzean day, every 70 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Pewter Ingot has the widest use: 63 recipes call for it, spanning six of the eight crafting classes.