Oh and the bonus/point of a Paroxysmus's Swamp Dragon over an ordinary swamp dragon is the armor doesn't break. You can insure barding deeds but some people don't have mules to make them and don't want to spend money on it all the time.
True, but if you do have a mule (having one is a good idea for imbuing convenience) they're really not too expensive, grab a good talisman and a +10 or +15 ash, and at 120 you have 100% exceptional chance and can buy ingots (ore) from faction vendors for typically less than 14gp per which is... about 10k per armor.
if a ParoxySwampy is 7 mil that's 700 armors worth of much better armor that pays for itself just with saved insurance money.
Having a mule will end up saving you a *lot* of money, depending on how much you imbue.
Oh and to reply to the Original Post's question, if you don't mind the goofy look of an elf, and you don't use meditation, look into heartwood (and bloodwood) armor. Tons of free resists and heartwood has a chance of having either +5HCI or +10DI on each piece if you have lots of money to throw around. If you're in factions you can use the elf-earrings, but will then need some other source of nightsight. (NS spells and potions are screwed up, cant trust them)
