Yeah, cleric usually is a great starting class for meeting people. You'd get groups easily in the old days.
But, Im not sure how the pickup group situation is for leveling these days? I hope its still good-ish enough that as a cleric youll be able to find groups.
But until you are 6, if you can just keep running head first into anything that is green blue and even (and even yellow! but taht will probubly kill you).
Hopefully someone who is able to hooks you up with some banded armor!
As a dwarf cleric, starting by yourself, I would reccomend trying to do these quests!
These are great armor upgrades for a newbie dwarf fresh out of the cave:
https://wiki.project1999.com/Scarab_Armor_Quests
Save Orc belts to get some starter armor:
https://wiki.project1999.com/Crushbone_Belts
See if you can kill these ogres when you get a little higher like 7+:
https://wiki.project1999.com/Ogre_Heads
Those are great armor upgrades for starter if you're not getting handouts!
Also if you are starting fresh collecting and making your own set of patchwork armor is somethign I like to do but it's kind of overwhelming to learn a new skill like tailoring while learning eq.
https://wiki.project1999.com/Tailoring
All of this you can ignore if someone gets you a set of banded and a magic hammer.