I agree with everything you said.
Except... well I have tons of essences saved up, later in the game.
But yes, like making a new two-handed sword is the easiest thing in the world. But making a new bow is hard as crap. Which is kind of opposite from the real world.
What I would really like is
1- a journal tab which lists recipes (and not in prose format)
2- the recipe books to update that journal tab by adding recipes
3- all of the common useful recipes to by findable in recipe books
I stopped bothering to read the damn things because I became frustrated with how little they actually helped, so I just looked everything up online.
