Recovery steps question

So nobody is worried I’m talking about recovering a wallet with less than $10 dollar worth of raven in it! 😂 I recovered it today since data loss had wiped the old computer it used to exist on …..as I have the 12 word pass phrase ….but once synced the wallet has no receiving address (I do also know that address!) and thus zero total? Do I need the wallet.dat to recover that? If so that should be declared strongly all over the place on ravencoin.org …instead the recovery steps talk as if you can recover wallet with only the pass phrase. Should that actually work? Recovery is pretty useless if your receiving addresses aren’t in there and thus no ravens either! 😂 You can definitely recover other coin wallets with only pass phrase, as I’ve tested this out and wallets normally stay intact. If possible I’d like not worry about dat files. Good to learn this stuff early how it all works… so I don’t potentially lose a more hefty raven wallet someday!! 😅