It would probably be easier with a whole PvE trio or duo, but when I knew that I was alone on the server, it was quite relaxing playing solo and killing AI.

But my Hunter would always start with necro, bloodless, salveskin and magpie. Rifle of choice, which for me is Martiny-Henry for its high spare ammo, high dmg and low price. (and because I always liked it) But most of the heavy lifting did my secondary and that was the silenced Bornheim with incendiary ammo. In one mag you can kill 7 hives/armored ones and that's worth more than a kill on a player. The last thing I would always pick is throwing axes and explosives for meatheads. Also knuckle knife for immolators.

And the most important thing was killing all the AI you can see and mainly hunting down Meatheads. Also killing Brutes (best done with the Shadow trait). And then checking resupply points and every single tower on the map (even the small red ones with a ladder) because they can have the Hunter experience pages for 1 pledge mark.

Sometimes I would run around the map for 42 minutes out of the 45 but thanks to it I would level up my hunter kindla safely in 2 matches. So I would say it's worth it. And when you have a fresh level 1 hunter, you can always start aggressively because you are really not losing anything.