The most common answers are Mithral for armor and Adamantine for weapons. Lowered ACP and higher Dex bonuses are huge, and the ability to mostly ignore hardness (while simultaneously being very hard to sunder) are great.
Horacalcum (while very expensive) does provide some valuable advantages, but is absurdly costly (+6,000 for weapons, +10,000 for light armor, +30,000 for medium armor, and +60,000 gp for heavy armor) for its bonuses of +1 attack or +1/2/3 initiative.
Mithril/Darkleaf Cloth for armor, because the category reduction, increased MDB, and reduced ACP are invaluable. (As well as reduced Arcane Spell Failure.) Mithril Buckler for arcane spellcasters, though a Living Steel Buckler/Shield is also worthwhile for people who are constantly attacked with manufactured weapons.
Adamantine for weapons, but this doesn't particularly matter unless you're a Sunder specialist, since Adamantine only lets you bypass Hardness compared to simply pumping out your weapon to +5 ASAP. It's otherwise a good idea to carry around weapons of multiple materials and damage types, especially in the earlier levels where having high enhancement bonus weapons isn't really feasible.
Cold Iron ammunition, possibly with alchemical silver weapon blanch on top.
Get any kind of clothes (like pants) made of griffonmane for a bonus to fly checks.
But again I must ask, is it possible to make a lead lined cloak to block divinations and detect spells?
Up to GM fiat, as there is no rule covering it. Just remember that your cloak's lining won't block divinations by someone whose line of sight to you is not completely blocked by it, i.e. someone in front of you will probably manage anyway.
so wait, it doesn't give the wearer an immunity to that energy damage? WTF? So why go through all the work of finding a big enough dragon to get enough scales for the armor, when it doesn't even protect the wearer?
Because you're a druid that can't wear metal?
Also
If the armor or shield is later given the ability to protect the wearer against that energy type, the cost to add such protection is reduced by 25%.
No love for the Darkwood Heavy Shield? Delicious for classes that overwise cannot wield shields, cheap and effective +2 AC.
What about arcane casters like wizards & sorcerers?
A darkwood heavy shield still has an arcane spell failure rate of 15%. OTOH, I was sure that mithral specified a 5% minimum as darkleaf cloth does, but no! Now, a mithral chain shirt or a heavy mithral shield will still have a 5% spell failure rate, but it looks like a light mithral shield or a mithral buckler would give a wizard or sorcerer +1 to AC with no penalties at all. Is this right? Why give a minimum to darkwood and not mithral?
Of course, I may have found the fly in the soup...
In any case, if you use a weapon in your off hand, you lose the buckler's AC bonus until your next turn. You can cast a spell with somatic components using your shield arm, but you lose the buckler's AC bonus until your next turn.
In short, yes, you probably can do it, using your other hand to cast with. However, I assume you can't be holding a staff or metamagic rod in your shield hand and still get the AC bonus. Drat.
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Voyage Into Dreamland...
Then there's turning "celestial" into an armor property. I assume that it's enchanted mithral, and wouldn't stack with ordinary mithral. (Certainly its armor check penalty & weight suggest as much.) Still, you can make Parade armor out of metal, and get a +2 circumstance bonus on Diplomacy and Intimidate checks on people from your country, to boot. Extrapolating from the stats given vs. the stats for chain mail, Celestial Parade armor would give +3 to AC and a chance for armor enchantments, with an unlimited max Dex bonus (okay, +11), an Armor Check penalty of 0, and 0% chance of spell failure. Nifty keen! Now all I need is a character with the background to RP wearing such a thing...
And an idea of the cost. Celestial armor as listed is +3 chain mail costing 22,500 gp. +3 chain mail costs 9,150, I believe. If it has to be mithral, that adds 4,000 gp. And let's not forget the 1x/day Fly, which I believe would add 5,400 to the costs. Am I doing something wrong? Because then I get either 3,850 (if I'm paying for mithral separately) or 7,850 gp left over for the celestial enchantment. The second I suppose would equal a +1 bonus cost of 7,000 gp and 850 gp for I don't know what...
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I always keep some durable adamantine arrows on my ranged characters to deal with hardness as the blanch does not help with that.I have a character who is a pretty good archer who might do that when she can afford it. Maybe not: She will eventually take levels in Grenadier Alchemist and shoot exploding arrows with Explosive Missile and Alchemal Missile. I have my doubts that a GM would allow a durable arrow will be THAT durable, even if it is Adamantine.
Ya, that might too durable, but with the way hardness and energy damage work I would just save my bombs in that situation and use the durable adamantine arrows.
I like Voidglass for weapons (from the Dragon's Demand module). It's only 1000 GP, adds 1 damage (piercing/slashing only), and makes it fun and profitable to poke rust monsters.
yeah it would be about the 7,850 gp mark for a non flying celestial chain
which tbh, at that level you can probably afford something that gives you more fly a day, or a permanent fly item. Or if the casters in the group like you enough, they can cast overland flight or fly on youBut if you're a caster and have the shield in your off hand, and have your main hand open, could you benefit from the shield and casts spells without suffering the spell failure chance?
Just to verify that I understand what you're saying on celestial pricing... If I could get +3 Celestial chain mail without the 1x/day Fly, I'd subtract 5,400 gp from the book cost, leaving 17,000 gp, right? OK, 16,000 goes for +4 in enchantments, +3 of which are armor bonus, I get that. 150 of the remaining 1,000 gp is the base item. What do I get for 850 gp? If I want to use the Celestial property on other armor, is it reasonable to claim that it's a +1 bonus property?
As for casting with 100% success using an empty hand, while the other is bogged down with a shield that imposes spell failure... you could run it past your GM, is all I can say. It's logical to me, but the book offers no comfort that I know of.
Armor restricts the complicated gestures required while casting any spell that has a somatic component. The armor and shield descriptions list the arcane spell failure chance for different armors and shields.
If a spell doesn't have a somatic component, an arcane spellcaster can cast it with no arcane spell failure chance while wearing armor. Such spells can also be cast even if the caster's hands are bound or he is grappling (although concentration checks still apply normally). The metamagic feat Still Spell allows a spellcaster to prepare or cast a spell without the somatic component at one spell level higher than normal. This also provides a way to cast a spell while wearing armor without risking arcane spell failure.
{I should add: I'd argue in favor of a steel buckler being wearable without imposing spell failure. However, if you want that +1 AC, now, then you're taking the 5% chance. At least, that is the way I read the rules.}