How many lakes and rivers, freshwater, exist with no settlements "neartby"? Of course you will eventually find a settlement somewhere along a large river, but that doesn't mean there are any nearby.
Barely any. The concentration of settlements are much higher along rivers and by lakes than anywhere else.
Let's take a major river. Let's say someone crashed along the Amazon River in South America. How many settlements are along that river? How far apart are they? Just because you crashed in the Amazon River doesn't mean you're near a settlement.
Likewise, take the Mississippi River before Europeans settled there. How many settlements existed along that river?
Do Indian settlements not count? Any village or people would do.
My point is that in BG3 you just crashed in some random remote area. You don't even know what plane of existence you're in because you know darn well you were just bouncing all over the place into the Hells and everything. For all you know, you could be on some random unpopulated realm with literally no cities.
Even if they don't know where you are, why would a person from the Sword Coast assume wherever they are don't work the same as where they are from? They're likelier to presume it works exactly like what they are used to.
