Manganese Needle

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Manganese Needle is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Manganese Ingot ×2, Blue Zircon ×1 and Annite Whetstone ×2 — which resolve to 4 distinct raw materials totalling 23 units, plus 56 crystals.

That bill outweighs 8,647 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 1,288 of the 2,216 Goldsmith ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 16 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 40 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 32 Wind Crystal and 24 Fire Crystal.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Goldsmith to Lv 87 and Blacksmith to Lv 86 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

All 4 raw materials are gathered, and not one of their spots is timed, so nothing in the tree waits on the Eorzean clock.

Of the intermediates, Manganese Ingot has the widest use: 134 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.