I'm not too ashamed to admit that I bumped the difficulty down to casual just to kill the Hinterlands dragon and get approval. I was level 13 and gave it a shot on normal, but when it was clear that it wasn't going to happen, I had no qualms about lowering the difficulty. Maybe if this was the Storm Coast dragon I might have tried again or come back later, but you have to walk
so far (without saving) to fight the one there and I knew I was not going to do that twice. Life is too short. This game is too long. (unpopular opinion? I mean, I still love it...)
Anyway, doing that actually gets you a lot because there's a scene afterwards where you can get some more approval bumps.
But, yeah, just helping other people with their fetch quests gets you a lot of approval. In particular, I (vaguely) remember a quest with a missing scout in the southern part of the Hinterlands where you can get a few approval bumps from him.