As you level the recipes you use vs the recipes you plan to forget become very apparent leaving a continuous need to respect as you progress which seems flawed. I suggest they redesign this to be adaptive to leveling and not come with any regrettable recipe choices.
-This would ONLY apply to gear related recipes such as weapons, armor, and tools.
-The only recipes for these you choose is the baseline version, so for swords axes and maces you pick the 1 handed mastery, 2 handed weapons you select a mastery, throwing axes bows and javelins you pick one, cleavers and skinning knives you pick one, etc.
-In order to learn further tiers, you must use gear from its respective base recipe or complete various tasks which automatically advance you to the next tier. Tasks such as finding a recipe sheet off a specific thrall, or in the open world, and defeating enemies and animals with the gear equipped to slowly progress. (This may difficult to implement but a separate progress bar for this would benefit those leveling the most).
-Move some recipes to actual recipe sheets discovered in chests or on thralls such as the stygian kopesh. There could even be a by-product of capturing and breaking armorsmiths and blacksmiths to produce a recipe sheet once they are converted, leaving it in the wheel of pain. These sheets should be related to the tier of thrall you capture so higher tier recipes can come from those high tier thralls you capture.
The goal here is not forcing players to respec after spending so many points on gear as they level, and even end-game players to give them options to keep many recipes for stations and aesthetics.