Single Player Sea of Thieves Run - Possible, or a total waste of time?

Ahoy folks!

So recently I ended up in a scenario where I got to chat with one of the devs of Sea of Thieves and we got onto the fact that it was definitely a game designed to be played with a group of mates all using voice chat. I was explaining how this is the biggest
reason I haven't been able to get into it as not one of of my mates has an Xbox, let alone Xbox Live and a copy of the game. He then mentioned that Rare recevied enough community outcry for a single player version of the game that it is possible to hop on
on your own by setting sail with a closed invite only party and just launching without inviting anyone.

I gave this one proper go and honestly had the loveliest half an hour manning a ship on my own. That was until I got to my mission destination where I ran into a four-person ship who immediately opened fire on me, boarded my dinky little ship and spawn killed
me until the game itself decided to respawn me really far away (I think they might have scuttled the ship or something). Just given the loveliness of that first half an hour before encountering those guys I'd really like to believe I could get into sinking
a few hours of gameplay into it in the evenings in a solo run.

What does the community think though? Provided I could manage to get used to navigating around other ships on missions in a kind of a stealthy run, are there other later game obstacles that would make a solo run of SoT more trouble than its worth?

Would love to hear some constructive stuff from any seasoned seadogs out there!

:)