The random encounters in SoZ never bothered me much... I had hired the Ranger from Samargol and boosted her hide/move silently/listen skills so high that I could detect & happily avoid every single encounter in the game. It made the game much more enjoyable.
What did bother me was how trivial it became to make gold in the game once you set up a few trading posts here and there... then I bought/crafted some uber equipment and simply breezed through everything (including the last bosses).
Yeh... that guy really kicked my butt when my PC misspoke and made him hostile...