Vale Sangora is divided into ten regions, and each one carries a level band it was built for. The bands are not gates and nothing stops you walking into the wrong one, but they tell you the order the valley expects.
The ten bands in order
Laslea Glen runs from level 1 to 3. Briar Sloughs 8 to 16. Maragir Wealds 10 to 18. St. Tyna's Grove 15 to 23. Svartrau City 17 to 25. Boar's Back 22 to 30. Rockfalls 24 to 32. The Silts 29 to 37. Tantari Woods 31 to 39. Greifberg Castle 36 to 50.
They overlap heavily, which is the point. At level 24 four different regions are within their band, so the ordering is a suggestion about difficulty rather than a corridor.
The gap after the Prologue is the thing to notice
Laslea Glen stops at 3 and the next band does not open until 8. Nothing in the valley is tuned for levels 4 to 7.
So the hours straight after the Prologue are spent under-levelled by design, and that is not a sign you missed something. It is also the strongest practical argument for finishing the Prologue's side content, since those ten quests are the cheapest levels you will ever be offered.
Discovery pays more the further out you go
Finding a new region grants experience on a ladder. Laslea Glen gives nothing, since you begin there. Briar Sloughs and Maragir Wealds give 50. St. Tyna's Grove, Svartrau City and Boar's Back give 75. Rockfalls, The Silts and Tantari Woods give 100. Greifberg Castle gives 125.
It is a small ladder, but it points the same way everything else does: walking somewhere new is never the wrong move, because walking costs no time.
Svartrau City holds nearly a third of the map
Of the 5,919 markers on the valley map, 1,855 sit inside Svartrau City. The next densest region is Tantari Woods at 577, then The Silts at 557 and Briar Sloughs at 508.
That distribution is worth planning around. The capital is not one location among ten, it is roughly three regions worth of content stacked into one, and treating it as a single stop underestimates it by a wide margin.
Eleven towers, and more than a hundred fast travel points
The eleven scouting towers each reveal the activities around them, and all eleven need the vrakhir form to climb. There is also an achievement for all eleven, so the count is not in doubt.
Fast travel runs between shrines you have already discovered, and there are more than a hundred of them across the valley. Since fast travel costs no time, a shrine found early pays for itself the whole run.
What the map holds besides quests
Thirty-two monster nests. Twenty destroyed shrines. Fifty-four camps between the bandits, Brencis's men and the rest. Fifteen bandit camps among them. Five pillories and five of Brencis's flags.
The small round numbers are the ones to note, because several of them are exactly what an achievement asks for. Five flags is the whole set. Twenty destroyed shrines against a target of five leaves you plenty of slack.