I had this issue too while questing, it took some tinkering to make a 'nerfed profile' where the overland enemies pose a bit of danger, wearing almost no armor, no blue/red CP skills, fairly low health, also using some of the new 'scribing' skills, they're customizable but not very powerful, I use a npc companion too because it's more fun gameplay overall, on average I don't think people have enough time to mess around like this though, the overland feedback thread on their forum has like 200+ pages of people debating for and against raising overland difficulty lol