Keara's is one of the toughest so if you take it head on at anything under L29/30, you sure have to put lots of strategic elements in your game. That marking on your map was not a hint AFAIK, rather a quest marker. I think the position of the FFs should be your guide here, easy ones are located close proximity from where you start in OF and the further ones tend to be tougher. The first one you can spot is Stone's hence should be the easiest. How I made up my list to hit was simply by entering each one to measure the levels of the enemy. So I entered stone's FF and cleared most of it, went back to BV to take down the Aerial threats and ballistas only to return to finish off Stone. BTW I'm playing in Hard for some time now (since Zagan made me reload at least five time!!). And I'll save demon lord Ba'al, the vanquisher of LL, for later and hope he would prove to be worthy adversary.
About the sand box elements I got the same feeling. Sometimes the game seems to loose its tracks a bit and depends heavily on leaner aspects and that hurts the otherwise immersive experience. But still it is a fantastic game and one of those seemingly rare titles where strategy is still a big part of the game-play.
