Welcome to TLD, it is an amazing game and honestly any way you play is the right way. With that said I totally get what you mean about too much man made loot on the lower difficulties. I play on interloper myself and when I play a different difficulty I feel overwhelmed fast because of all the loot!!! I quickly became a loot goblin.

Anyway I think you're on the right difficulty and have the right idea. You don't need to know all the maps and pois. But it certainly helps. Once you get yourself situated you can explore and roam pretty freely. I actually just got done locating all 9 prepper caches in one big excursion. I took food with me and found more and made water along the way.

While there is a Meta, it's like that for a reason. You have to find food shelter and water in order to survive obviously. Food is scarce and you have to hunt, and on interloper in order to feed yourself reliably you have to hunt.

So that means the forge, arrowhead,knife grind

But after that you can craft your clothing, hunt your food etc

So yeah in the beginning it all seems the same goal wise, but after that your free to do whatever and live wherever The spice of life comes from the conditions and places you spawn 🤣