Black Star

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Black Star is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 1 intermediate — Magnesia 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 8 Water Crystal and 8 Wind Crystal.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Goldsmith to Lv 98 and Alchemist to Lv 95 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

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

Black Star is itself consumed by 161 further recipes, spanning six of the eight crafting classes.