Initiate's Pickaxe

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Initiate's Pickaxe is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 4 intermediates — Elm Lumber ×1, Iron Ingot ×1, Undyed Cotton Cloth ×1 and 1 other — which resolve to 3 distinct raw materials totalling 8 units, plus 7 crystals.

That bill outweighs 5,254 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 529 of the 1,932 Blacksmith ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 3 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 4 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 3 Fire Shard, 2 Lightning Shard, 1 Earth Shard and 1 other kind.

The chain crosses three disciplines — Blacksmith to Lv 22, Carpenter to Lv 16 and Weaver to Lv 13 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

All 3 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, Iron Ingot has the widest use: 113 recipes call for it, spanning seven of the eight crafting classes.