Right now crafting is linear and a sheer grind. Whilst we cannot really do anything about the grind per say we could add depth and specialisation.

For example we have carts and furniture on the horizon and perhaps other specialised skills like agriculture. Perhaps rather than just letting everyone automatically gain these skills, the skills drop from books at rare scrap heaps such as library remains etc. which gets people into the new lands too or just break them up into basic and advanced skills and set a max skill number so you could only have max 3 or 4 specialised skills. So a basic skill book would be found every so often by most but the advanced skill books would be very rare. Now you have a fewer number of people that could be advanced cart builders or furniture makers so we can get an economy going.

So essentially you would have...

crude furniture maker (requires woodworking 50 and maybe toolcrafting 50), advanced furniture maker (high reqs in crude skills and high in woodworking and toolcrafting)
crude cart maker, advanced cart maker (as above ish for reqs)

and whilst you could do the same with the existing skills and reset everyone to crude status it would require a nerf. You could also then set a requirement for skills and recipes so that a recipe in architecture or furniture requires x exp in woodworking and x exp in toolcraft so now you have to have skill requirements for recipes and advanced skills. So advanced furniture making requires crude furniture making 80 etc. and set the soft skill cap to a % of the max number of skills you're allowed. this would have the effect of adding a little more depth and preventing everyone being very good at everything and even have all skills at a level.

If you were to do something like this then you could for those that are at 100 on say architecture, automatically give them the advanced skill as well and it's up to them whether they wish to unlearn it instead of a straight nerf.

At least if the soft skill cap is a % of the max (100) in each skill and you are allowed only so many skills then that would be sorted too. Requirements effectively force people to invest in skills up to a certain level if they wish to be effective with specialised skills and thus eat up thier allowance of max skill points. the max skill points could also be a floating figure relative to the numbers of skills in game rather than a max number of skills allowed so it will grow as the game advances. Max recipes in each skill would also effect what you do and don't learn.

One issue with the unlearn system right now, is that you cannot get that skill back and could effectively relearn the same skill with skill gains depending on how they have implemented it. How about the skills list shows all skills, available and those learnt and then when you gain a recipe by skill gain, you get the choice to learn it or not. Right now you auto learn it instead of it just becomming available. In order to learn new skills you would need to keep unlearning a skill if you're at the max already. With a change to something like this, it would just become available ths not preventing further gains.

Just some thoughts to get some discussion going.