Honestly, there’s way too much in this game to go without the wiki IMO. Not that you can’t have a good time without it, but it definitely opens up so much in the game.
Stuff like which dinos are good at gathering which resources, some have weight reductions for some materials, etc. Some dinos have passive abilities that are nice to know about.
If you’re all about the grind and randomly discovering things, that’s definitely an option, but there’s stuff that you’re likely to never find accidentally, like boss battles and the means to unlock them.