outfitting low level gear in hc
I've got a few lesser runes, a handful of chipped gems, and a couple of 3 socketed items. How bad of an idea would it be to drop some of the gems or runes into my items? Should I wait until I get the cube so that I can transmute them?
Also, is it a bad idea to drop gems into items and pass them onto my merc?
This is probably more of a general question, but I'm thinking from the standpoint of bumping up my armor and defense. I solo a whole lot in HC because I'm a little fearful of entering public games due to the threat of PK. I'm not fast enough to exit the game or TP out of a bad situation in most cases.