Kind of depends on if we'll need Materia IV, or if Materia I, is sufficient...
But considering that Animus could take 150hrs, and there's multiple ways to obtain Alexandrites....i'm wondering how many alexandrites we'll even need? and Materia part will probably be a big time-sink...so i guess Materia IV...or even V
That way no one will have a head-start. Maybe we can get Materia V, by de-synth high lv gear, instead of SB. So might want to grind DL gear to de-synth, or even primal/coil gear.