What follows are just some pieces of advice. Follow them at your own risk! (and... you can always state your disagreement in the comments). Let's go:
How to maximize your defense and take less hits.This is the armor suit for you if you like dodging:
Greaves
Leather pants
Leather armor
Iron helm
Steel shield
Unicorn medallion
This gives no defense penalties and the unicorn med and steel shield raise your defense a +11. If you take a sword, it will probably also raise your defense by a bit. I usually take a tit short for cyclops and it gives me another +2 defense for a +13 total.
Minimizing damage. If you're fighting a monster for hunting that is still strong for you, you might want to reduce the damage to the lowest you can.
This is the suggested armor for this case:
Platemail
Greaves
Cuisses
Steel shield
Moon medallion
Iron helm
This set of armor gives you an armor value of 17/24 reducing your damage by a big number already.
Info on hitting and your dealt damage. If fighting monsters or PKing you probably like to do a decent amount of damage or just start off by hitting it already.
Swords: Swords increase accuracy and damage, also increase the chance of scoring a critical hit. Next to that they also add to your defenses. It is suggested your use swords for a high accuracy and hit rate.
Axes: The highest damage dealt in EL (not counting magic weapons) is dealt by axes. Their damage reaches great heights and makes them a weapon to be afraid of.
HOWEVER they do not increase accuracy. It is very hard to hit someone using axes, but they score nice hits which make up for the lower hit rate. Also watch out for the little defense penalty they give you. Suggest you use a moon med for the accuracy if you're wielding an axe.
Hammers: Like the axes, these weapons deal great damage. But it is highly suggested you use another weapon then an axe. Their damage may be high BUT they also decrease your defense, accuracy and critical to hit/damage. If you use them, a moon med for the accuracy is suggested and a steel shield to make up for the defense penalty.
Staffs: A nice weapon, gives you an increase in accuracy, defense and critical to hit, but lowers your critical to damage rate. They are also the only 2-handed weapon in the game. This does disallow you to carry a shield with you, thus making you easier hit by the monster/player you're fighting. Suggest you take a unicorn medallion with this weapon to make up for not wearing a shield.
Armor affecting your hit rate. Always take a close look at your armor before taking it along, I have checked the plate items, most do not affect your hit rate but the platemail will decrease your accuracy and critical to hit. Chains also decrease your accuracy by 1 and your critical to hit by 1. Steel shields decrease your accuracy and critical to hit by 2, as do the iron shields.
Some more tips:
Mirror cloaks are the worst for training, they take away 10% of your attack exp and are expensive losses when they break.
Steel chains have the same armor value as degraded platemail/titanium chain. We suggest you sell whatever titanium chain you got and get some steel chains, because even when not degraded the difference is small.
This post will be updated as I am further informed on the issue. 
Where can you get the Summoning Stones books?
