Currently, elemental gauntlets (rarely Ironfist and fresh Montojja gloves) are often the most common choice (more of a no-brainer) to hazardous areas. This obviously happens because they are indestructible protecting themselves as well as rings underneath. However, elemental gauntlets display somewhat poor DV/PV properties (and normally by the end-game granted intrinsics don't really matter).

All other gauntlets can be improved with scrolls or smithing but are vulnerable to elemental damage, being made of iron/leather.

Finally, there are no non-leather gauntlets that are Mist Elf-friendly, but that is a minor issue.

While I'm generally against adding higher-metal equivalent of existing items to exhaust our "new item pool", I feel that adding mithril/adamantium/eternium gauntlets is somewhat reasonable. I would even suggest moving <color> dragon-hide gauntlets into mithril territory and adding only adamantium/eternium normal gauntlets, but I feel that will completely nullify elemental gauntlets value (although still a reasonable choice for ToEF with water orb equipped).