It's literaly the 2nd area. Where the Forest Guardian is, I suppose (same place you get boar-meat).
I was happily jumping on the area with my melee warrior, and ta dah, I'm stunned, can't doa single thing, some BS monster just eliminates me.
What happund?

ANSWER: yes, you need ranged attack. Darn.

EDIT: Also: is there any shop? Selling equipment sounds like a solid idea.

ANSWER: found a vendor. Would have been good right from the getgo... Also, in a more obvious way... But ye, you can sell stuff.

Yeah, the forest is a MASSIVE difficulty spike for a melee character (read impossible). You just have to whittle them down by running around for hours, doing 2 points of damage at a time with a ranged weapon. The stun would be OK, but the wood elementals deal absolutely insane damage. You simply can't even get near them. It was where I swapped from the hardest difficulty to one below.