Ceremonial Vambraces of Fending ★★★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Ceremonial Vambraces of Fending is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 4 intermediates — Grade 3 Gemsap of Vitality ×2, Octahedrite Nugget ×2, Cronopio Leather ×1 and 1 other — which resolve to 10 distinct raw materials totalling 29 units, plus 38 crystals.

That bill outweighs 10,170 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,028 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 6 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 32 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 12 Earth Cluster, 8 Lightning Crystal, 6 Fire Cluster and 4 other kinds.

The chain crosses five disciplines — Armorer to Lv 100, Alchemist to Lv 100, Blacksmith to Lv 100, Leatherworker to Lv 100 and Weaver to Lv 98 — 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: Fulgurite (2:00, 14:00), Octahedrite (10:00, 22:00) and 1 other. The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 6 Eorzean hours, about 18 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Thunderyards Silk has the widest use: 120 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.