Courtly Lover's Surcoat of Fending ★★★★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Courtly Lover's Surcoat of Fending is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 4 intermediates — Urqopacha Linen ×3, Double Duraluminum Ingot ×2, Grade 4 Gemsap of Vitality ×2 and 1 other — which resolve to 9 distinct raw materials totalling 43 units, plus 50 crystals.

That bill outweighs 12,178 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,293 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 6 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 44 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 12 Lightning Cluster, 9 Earth Cluster, 9 Wind Cluster and 4 other kinds.

The chain crosses four disciplines — Armorer to Lv 100, Alchemist to Lv 100, Blacksmith to Lv 100 and Weaver to Lv 100 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

6 of the 9 raw materials come out of the ground, and 3 of them are time-gated: Dense Aluminum Ore (10:00, 22:00), Urqopacha Flax (6:00, 18:00) and 1 other. The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 4 Eorzean hours, about 12 real-world minutes.

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