Classical Shield ★★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Classical Shield is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Grade 6 Vitality Alkahest ×1, Lunar Adamantite Ingot ×1 and Mempisang Lumber ×1 — which resolve to 8 distinct raw materials totalling 16 units, plus 24 crystals.

That bill outweighs 6,959 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 642 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 6 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 18 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 6 Earth Cluster, 6 Ice Cluster, 3 Fire Cluster and 3 other kinds.

The chain crosses four disciplines — Armorer to Lv 90, Alchemist to Lv 90, Blacksmith to Lv 90 and Carpenter to Lv 90 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

5 of the 8 raw materials come out of the ground, and 3 of them are time-gated: Double-edged Herb (10:00, 22:00), Lunar Adamantite Ore (2:00, 14:00) and 1 other. The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 4 Eorzean hours, about 12 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Lunar Adamantite Ingot has the widest use: 71 recipes call for it, spanning six of the eight crafting classes.