This is a surprisingly pleasant (and unexpected) combination! It worked exceptionally well in my opinion. I liked the quests, strategizing around the paths (and knowing when to avoid certain paths to prevent dead-ends), and the longer you got, more challenging and risky everything became.
It's not immediately obvious, but I'm thinking now that the best strategy may be to avoid growing altogether until you nail all the quests. Because when backtracking is necessary, your body can really get in your way (literally)
I may return to this later to try and get everything, I only got 104 apples so far:
Great job!