Deepgold Kite Shield

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Deepgold Kite Shield is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Deepgold Nugget ×2, Oroshigane Ingot ×1 and Stonegold Nugget ×1 — which resolve to 5 distinct raw materials totalling 20 units, plus 33 crystals.

That bill outweighs 7,876 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 757 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 11 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 22 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 16 Fire Crystal, 6 Ice Crystal, 6 Wind Crystal and 1 other kind.

The chain crosses three disciplines — Armorer to Lv 71, Blacksmith to Lv 71 and Goldsmith to Lv 71 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

All 5 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, Oroshigane Ingot has the widest use: 114 recipes call for it, spanning six of the eight crafting classes.