About elephant: you sure it is possible? Tried to buy a horse, but got the 'alreadyhave a pet mesage'. BLade barrier- my bad, missed it falling. And unfortunatelly i do lack any other damage right now, just hate, when my hammer crumbles right in the middle of the battle.

And about damage type also. Arpade's was definatelly not good- Drakoth had much better damage type, whereas Arpade did injures on nature grace and resist cold.
P.S. Critic is critisizing, that's natural.

it's possible, just buy elephant first, and only after call griffon
type triggers on spell down
there are a lot of nice maces (damtype, maybe not ave ) you can achieve right now ) try to find them
and think a bit
he is mino, he has native resists to physical, cold, aversion to fire
phantasmal armor grants with holy, phisical and low mental resists
durewn can cast resist fire, cold, lightning, holy, acid
so the best damtype - energy, wrath, maybe fire if durewn doesn't resist Drakoth with fire

there are two maces with poisonus bite damtype, no one has resists except from feat (Snake Blood, but it's not ordinary), find them )