[Shodo]

You should definitely be able to find groups in crushbone at level 8. Some good short term goals gearwise would be:

A set of banded mail for about 90pp so you don't die instantly. Alternatively wait for small bronze armor drops from Unrest if your race can wear small size armor.

Some cheap wisdom and mana jewelry - +3 wis earrings are pretty cheap, as are moonstone rings.

A cheap 1hander with a decent ratio, like a Sharkbone Warhammer (50-100pp).

How to get pp for stuff like this:
Save bone chips and spider silks to sell to players. Same with crushbone belts/pads.

With that list knocked out (should be able to do that by level 20), you can pretty much coast to 50 grabbing upgrades from dungeon drops when possible. Unrest has a few, as does upper guk.

All that said, your most important goal is to make friends. On the one hand, every group needs a healer, but on the other hand they only need one. So you'll be able to get rolling a lot faster if you have a few friends you can form a group with instead of waiting around with /lfg on.

Edit: if you would prefer more RP/quest- oriented goals, there are a few quests you can do in Crushbone, involving the slaves there I think. Typically the low level quests don't offer great rewards but a lot of them are fun lore- wise. Just look at the page for your starting city on the wiki and check out the "this zone contains the following quests" section