I've got a big crafting mod as an optional file on my Scales page (see my signature). Contains most of the crafting recipes from the old mods and a bunch more. Craftable helmets, gloves, belts, lots of enchants, breakdown recipes of armor to scraps, many miscellaneous recipes, etc. I don't consider some of the recipes very balanced (mostly the added enchantments), so I'm tweaking the recipes a bit to integrate into Scales better, but the file (Super Extended Crafting) is there for now. The recipes aren't documented, so you'll just have to open the text file directly and see the recipes for yourself (start from the very bottom).

Really want to reduce combat animations but not my forte and haven't figured out any kind of work around.

As far as Night-day cycle for the main story goes, I might look into it, but may or may not be possible. Probably still some of the major issues there was before with transition problems with indoors/outdoors and other problems. Involves specific fine-tuning of atmospheres, so not something you can just slap onto main but it would be very satisfying to see Cyseal transition.