man you been busy 
but love your ideas (especially the essence idea,very unique and fits boundless perfectly) would also give non crafters a way to make a bit of coin if the essences will be tradable.
Think @Miige has a valid point on the prof 2 tree but nothing a few tweaks cant fit (like a few extra links to allow you to go round say grapple,or connecting compass to half revive)
To be honest, I think I haven’t seen a single thing in that post I don’t like^^
It’s also a perfect middle ground between people who want a cap and people wo want to be able to unlock everything. You might not be able to unlock everything but there won’t be a thing you can’t do in the end. Some things might be harder to do or need to be done differently.
But you can still do them and that’s what I wanted from the beginning^^
@Thorbjorn42gbf
You are absolutely right, the percentages (I`d even say the perks themselves) are just exemplary to show the intended structure of the tree.
But @Heureka is talking about a typo I made, so he’s right too 
@Miige
Yeah I know, being able to avoid the things you mentioned would be awesome, but you need to have at least some parent- & children-nodes in order to form a decent tree shaped structure.(as that’s pretty much the definition of tree).
So just like you rightly assumed: I tried to pick the most ‘neutral’ node I could think of and ended up using “Grappling Proficiency”.
Bombs? I will become the stealthy Bombadier!
WOW! There is a ton on this thread as well! I read through a lot of it but it is hard to remember every detail of the posts so I will say what I have to say 
Personally, I feel like there does not need to be a spot in any skill tree for performing basic functions such as: crafting basic tools or weapons, trading, use of a compass, etc. A proficiency tree should be used for increasing how well you perform those basic actions. You can get benefits of increased functionality, hitting harder, crafting better, but only through use of that action whatever it may be. I am going to work on some charts and some more detailed information and post it at a later time.
@james P.S. If a dev could at least respond and give more detail on what main concept they want for skills and attributes and abilities, that could help aim my thoughts. There are so many ways to go about this and I am not sure randomly sharing my thoughts will help on this topic.