Tips:
Run Fertile Soil every time it pops up. It only takes like 5 minutes, you get a nice assortment of junk/chems, a decent chance of getting a level 5-10 legendary weapon or armor piece, and a couple hundred easy XP.
Run Powering up Poseidon every time you see it. Between killing level 1-6 scorched and completing the event you'll probably earn 1000+ XP in 20-30 minutes. Plus, you'll learn ever single mod for the hunting rifle, 10mm, and pipe weapons from scrapping all the weapons from the scorched.
After you complete the powering up event, capture the workshop. You get a couple hundred XP for claiming it, and a couple hundred more for completing the defense event that pops up a couple minutes later. For that matter, claim every available workshop in the forest and do the defense event. It opens you up to PvP, so don't bother putting too many resources into building on it in case you need to server hop and avoid a high level hunter coming after you.
Every time you see a "horde event" in the forest spend the money to fast travel to it. They almost always have a level appropriate legendary mob at the end. I ran one last night on my level 12 character and got a 2* level 10 two shot plus faster reload speed hunting rifle that should serve me well for quite a while.
If you see Leader of the Pack appear by the county fair grounds spend the money to go do it. It's 3 waves of 5-7 wolves and guarantees at least one (sometimes 2 or 3) level appropriate legendaries.
Beyond that, just kill everything you see.