Following this quest leads you exactly to the "right" spots with enemies balanced to your level.
A game without enemies scaling to your level is never really open world. And it's really not all that hard to think about what to do next...
No, it really doesn't. My quest journal entry after talking to the mushrooms and answering their riddles is "Maradino might have stashed a spell to break the barrier somewhere in the forest". That is it. While I don't mind the lack of information, it surely doesn't point anywhere, unless you consider "somewhere in the forest" a proper location indicator.
Also, after talking to all the people in Silverglen, not a single direction was given to me. Sure, they told me the mines are overrun by goblins, but noone told me where the hell are the mines. Loic told me to find a second part of the Immaculate book, but did not give a single hint as to where to look for.
In Cyseal, people had the decency to at least tell you what direction they want you to go. You know, clear the area around lighthouse just west of the city. Check the ruins up north. Or if they didn't, the quests and characters involved made sense and you could figure out the rest. Luculla forest gives no crap about that kinda stuff though. The quests are straight up "Find this" the end.
From all this it probably looks that I'm hating on the game, which I'm not, I love this game, I'm just a bit salty about the way it's treating me at the moment in the forest. Because now I have no other choice but to explore the area blindly and hoping for a lucky find. And I don't really mind doing that at all, because I would do that anyway, but I will argue that the quests in the forest area are poorly delivered.
