Mountain Chromite Tower Shield

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Mountain Chromite Tower Shield is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 4 intermediates — Lar Ingot ×1, Mountain Chromite Ingot ×1, Star Quartz ×1 and 1 other — which resolve to 6 distinct raw materials totalling 19 units, plus 47 crystals.

That bill outweighs 7,589 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 733 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 15 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 32 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 24 Wind Crystal, 8 Fire Crystal, 8 Ice Crystal and 1 other kind.

The chain crosses three disciplines — Armorer to Lv 91, Blacksmith to Lv 91 and Goldsmith to Lv 91 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

All 6 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, Star Quartz has the widest use: 157 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.