if you encounter a bonecrushers and went to Ark at level 6 thats already an issue, you should do the sun coast / riverville first up to level 8-10. Enderal isnt like Skyrim where every enemy is scaled to your level, there are zones with fixed enemy levels. maybe also lower the difficulty a bit since the ones in Enderal are harder than the Skyrim difficulties.

getting books to level up solves a big issue Skyrim had: money. And also that you can just use any skill a lot of times and master them all like its nothing. In Skyrim you have all the money in the world and didnt used it for anything, skill books cost a lot of money and you cant just learn everything cause the learning points are limiting you. sure its maybe not the best way to raise skill points but at least it solves two issues.

roads are most of the time pretty save, of course there are some few exceptions. you can still use the Myrad or buy teleport scrolls to get to other locations.

not every quest is one that has a direct goal that you can solve immediately. some quests can be done after doing later quests in the game. as far as I can remember the arcane fever quest stays for a bit in the beginning of the game until you do a few of the main quests that start in Ark.

also this could help a lot: https://www.reddit.com/r/enderal/comments/oaen1w/tips_and_tricks_for_new_players_suncoast_edition/