Star Quartz

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Star Quartz is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 1 intermediate — Annite Whetstone ×1 — which resolves to 2 distinct raw materials totalling 7 units, plus 16 crystals.

That bill outweighs 4,963 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 710 of the 2,216 Goldsmith ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 8 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 8 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 16 Wind Crystal.

Every step is Goldsmith work, from a Lv 86 intermediate up to the Lv 88 finish, so one class covers the whole chain.

Both raw materials are gathered, and no spot for either is timed, so nothing in the tree waits on the Eorzean clock.

Star Quartz is itself consumed by 157 further recipes, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.