Grimoire : Heralds of the Winged Exemplar – Briarpatch Woods, Shrine of the Raptor
After stepping out into the road, you should meet “Little Rosy” for the first time, have a conversation with her, and then you can recruit her to your party as a second NPC party member. The encounters here shouldn’t be much of a problem after that, go right ahead and dispatch “The Green Hand Gang,” which would have been an issue for an Lvl1 party starting in “The Shrine” area:
Shrine of the Raptor
It has a lot of Secret Doors and an Invisible Wall granting +5 Devotion to a single character, so make sure to have “Detect Secret” on at any time; for parties that started in “The Shrine” area, they can use the Owl Statue by putting it in an alcove near the entrance, opening up the lower part of the dungeon, with additional Lore added to the Journal and a Subterranean Level with a Statue able to Identify items and a Shrine that can remove Bad Status effects from characters like Disease: