Spiked Knuckles

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Spiked Knuckles is 3 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Aldgoat Leather ×1, Iron Plate ×1 and Iron Ingot ×3 — which resolve to 3 distinct raw materials totaling 11 units, plus 8 crystals.

That bill outweighs 5,999 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 661 of the 1,932 Blacksmith ones, and 337 recipes nest deeper.

Only 3 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 5 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 5 Fire Shard, 2 Earth Shard and 1 Ice Shard.

The chain crosses three disciplines — Blacksmith to Lv 23, Leatherworker to Lv 17 and Armorer to Lv 14 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

2 of the 3 raw materials match a gathering node, none of them timed; the other 1 comes from vendors, drops or content this site does not track.

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