Initiate's Needle

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Initiate's Needle is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 2 intermediates — Iron Ingot ×1 and Mudstone Whetstone ×1 — which resolve to 2 distinct raw materials totalling 5 units, plus 6 crystals.

That bill outweighs 4,201 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 564 of the 2,216 Goldsmith ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 4 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 2 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 3 Fire Shard and 3 Wind Shard.

The chain crosses two disciplines — Goldsmith to Lv 24 and Blacksmith to Lv 16 — 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.

Of the intermediates, Iron Ingot has the widest use: 113 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.