The region lock sounds kinda weird, but after a little search I see they want to restrict people who buys their phones in remote locations like China, which is kinda understandable. You shouldn't care about it if you buy your Note if you buy it in stores, in the same country you are. And anyway, pretty sure someone will find a way to desactivate the lock with a little rooting.

Do you want physical keys?

And if you want "the" Note 3, well you still have the SnapDragon/Exynos choice. You have two versions of the Note 3, one having a 4-core and 4G, the second one having a 8-core and no 4G. But the 8-core has a lowered frequence and the processor is quite new, so you don't gain much. I have the 4G version (and GTA San Andreas still runs ! ).

Other than that, it depends on what you want to do with your phone. If you want to play games (like GTA San Andreas ), take the latest one but if you mostly want a phone for "phone usage" (but with a big touchscreen), take the Note 1 and save money

Now about rooting. It is true that there is a new "protection" (KNOX), but you have a rooting method (Root De la Vega) that doesn't increase the KNOX counter, so you don't have to worry about that. Also, the only thing that counter does is saying "you messed up with software", but if it's the hardware that fails, the warranty still has value (at least in France). Check on the internet which versions that rooting method supports before buying
And I never used any warranty on anything so I just didn't care and rooted my phone as soon as I got it, incrementing that flag once and for all
The other thing that rooting without caring kills are the OTA updates. Since I did that, they are no longer proposed to me (but I don't care, I can find them on the internet). I don't know if the Root De la Vega solves that, you should see on the internet too

If you're lucky enough, you can find a Note for $0 with a 2- or 3-year contract at your favorite provider. Otherwise, yes it can be pretty expensive.

Just keep in mind that on such large phone, if you decide to run complex games or something, they can eat a lot of batteries and you might also want to keep syncing turned off when not using it, same for wi-fi, 3G, etc. Juju's mom sometimes played games on her phone and the battery was depleted in less than an hour or so.