Tree-level $b$ decays play a critical role in characterising the quark flavour sector, and exposing possible effects of physics beyond the Standard Model. These proceedings cover recent results from the LHCb experiment on semileptonic $b$ baryon decays, $\mathcal{R}(D^{\ast-})$ using three-prong hadronic $\tau$ decays, $CP$ observables in $B^-\to D^{(\ast)}h^-$ decays, and an updated combination on the CKM angle $\gamma$.