This card is good especially if there is no active location. I play it in a deck with Bilbo Baggins Gildor's Counsel and Good Meal with great results. There are many quests where there is no starting active locations. Having this out turn one will put you ahead on board. Unlike Gildors council this card works well for solo play as it reduces the number if cards to a minimum if 0. The only question I have is if it whiffs on finding a location I am unsure if the effect still goes off. Thankfully every time I've played it thus far it has found a location. Last night I was playing fate of wilderland and we were pretty far into the game with a bunch of allies. I played this card and found hills of wilderland on top, for that alone this card was worth the include.
The Hidden Way
Response: At the beginning of the quest phase, search the top 5 cards of the encounter deck for a location and make it the active location, returning any previous active location to the staging area. Then, reveal 1 less encounter card this phase (to a minimum of 0). Shuffle the encounter deck.
The Withered Heath #5. Lore.
I don't understand why this is a "Response: At the beginning of the quest phase" instead of "Quest Action". Unlike Travel phase where an effect like Mariner's Compass must be a response due to lack of an action window before the travel step (I wish they'd instead have just added an action window, but I digress), the quest phase does not have that problem because there are multiple action windows before and after each step.
The Hidden Way is interesting but seems too weak for the cost and the inability to play it during normal action windows. Gildor's Counsel, though costing one more, is likely better because you don't have to take a card into play, which is easily worth the extra buck. The Hidden Way should have cost $1 to make it worthwhile and on par with Strider's Path. Really though, none of these three cards is that great because they're too expensive. For 2 I'd much rather have Quickbeam or Ghân-buri-Ghân or Warden of Healing or Asfaloth or Gléowine or...