You should be getting escha-zitah gear first thing, then work on carmine gear and taeon.
I do not think you can solo the NM's, you will need at least 1 and perhaps 2 other people.
I'm not sure what you're offhanding but this is a good offhand:
https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Demersal_Degen
It drops from this guy:
https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Bakunawa
He is pretty annoying to deal with and can actually 1 shot even paladin tanks because his aura makes you incapable of blocking until you light skillchain and remove it. I personally tanked him and had a vajra thief 2 shot him with TA + WS and SA + WS doing 100% of it's HP. It's probably mandatory that you want some type of tank job for him(preferably paladin) because him and his adds attack so fast and can attack many times in a row(8?) as well as cross-strike for 500-1k+ damage. A decently geared(ochain + 35%+ PDT) paladin and some DD job should be able to duo him with trusts reliably. Barwater + stoneskin + blink will help you survive maelstrom(it's aoe attack). Make sure the paladin pops it so the adds + boss aggros him over you and to not stay by the paladin on pop because it always opens with maelstrom. Maelstrom causes it to resummon adds so its best to ignore them.
Augmenting is going to norg, talking to nolan and trading him the armor you want to augment(one at a time) then trading him x number of eschalixirs to fully augment it.
https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Nolan
edit:
I also forgot. Make sure you to do ambuscade(can do it with a few pieces of despair on normal/easy for volume 2) to get your JSE cape every month. Get a redmage cape asap and put 20 acc/20 attk, 10% double attack and 20 DEX on it.
Your goal after getting some despair and a JSE cape with nice augments should be to try to get JP(job points). RDM needs JP REALLY REALLY badly. 100 JP gives you t5 nukes which will help tremendously for dealing damage via nukes, 550 gives you distract3 and addle2(as well as frazzle3) which will help your supporting and 1200 gives you temper3 + which makes you really good at meleeing as well as refresh3 which is alright but not that great.