Earth Elemental and Magma Elemental

Conflux creatures
Level 1
Pixie
Sprite
Level 2
Air Elemental
Storm Elemental
Level 3
Water Elemental
Ice Elemental
Level 4
Fire Elemental
Energy Elemental
Level 5
Earth Elemental
Magma Elemental
Level 6
Psychic Elemental
Magic Elemental
Level 7
Firebird
Phoenix
Towns

Earth Elementals and Magma Elementals are the level 5 creatures of Conflux. They are recruited from the Altar of Earth, or the Earth Elemental Conflux and Elemental Conflux on the adventure map. Earth Elementals can also be summoned with the Summon Earth Elemental spell. They are creatures summoned from the Elemental Plane of Earth.

"Earth Elementals are forces of Earth Magic. They take no damage from Mind, Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Firestorm spells. They take double damage from Meteor Storm attacks. From a source deep beneath the world's surface, roam the Magma Elementals. Slightly stronger than their earthen counter-parts, Magma Elementals can also cast the spell Protection from Earth." ^{AB manual}

Special Abilities

• Earth and Magma Elementals: +100% to basic damage to Air and Storm Elementals.
• Magma Elementals: Can cast Protection from Earth three times per battle. The spell is cast on a single target at an Advanced Earth Magic level.

Bugs

Though Magma Elementals are level 5 units, the game considers them as level 3 (in creature level-based calculations and 'random monster 3' object in the map editor). (Fixed in HotA). 

Heroes with a specialty

• Thunar the Planeswalker and
• Erdamon the Planeswalker have earth elementals as a specialty. All Earth/Magma Elementals in their armies gain +2 Attack, +1 Defense and +5 Damage.

Restoration of Erathia

In Restoration of Erathia  Earth Elementals are level 5 Neutral creatures. They are recruited from Elemental Conflux or Earth Elemental Conflux.

Horn of the Abyss

• Magma Elementals' level bug is fixed.
• The in-game descriptions for both Earth and Magma Elementals are updated.
• The Elemental Conflux now increases the growth of all four basic elementals by 1.

User commentary

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Earth Elementals are one of the worst elementals, since they are incredibly slow and also expensive. Though they will win on melee 1v1 against other elementals, for their cost they are not as good. Also, they have significantly lower growth, with just 4 per week compared to the water's 6 - meaning the Earth Elementals actually produce less weekly HP. They can neither attack ranged, fly, or have other useful abilities. On the other hand one very notable property is their resistance to Armageddon (along with Fire Elementals), making them useful for Dragogeddon tactics. Another pretty notable property is their resistance to Lightning and Chain Lightning. If enemy heroes forget to research Ice Bolt, Meteor Shower, or Implosion (for the last two, Magma Elementals can still cast Protection from Earth), then these guys will not be able to take much single target spell damage. Overall, this is the elemental with the best resistances. Magma Elementals have the same weaknesses as their unupgraded counterparts (even with high individual HP for elementals, they have low defense for a level 5 creature: Compare their 11 Def vs the 16 Def of Mighty Gorgons). Though it is notable that although they are weak to Meteor Shower, their Protection from Earth cast spell does offer a defense against Meteor Shower itself. The most important stat upgrade is +2 speed (from 4 to 6). The Protection from Earth spell was buffed in HotA, resulting in an indirect small boost to the utility of Magma Elementals. Earth Elementals are basically only suited for garrison defense and Armageddon tactics, while Magma Elementals may find a place in your army but only if you have a lot of gold to recruit/upgrade them. If you can recruit more Storm or Ice Elementals you will be better off with them instead, much as like with Psychic and Magic Elementals. All in all they are a low priority unit. There is something of note however: Earth Elemental specialty is actually good. The +5 damage means that they deal at least 50% more damage than normal, turning them into decent units along with the atk and def bonus. However, take into account this specialty is fixed (doesn't scale with hero level), so it's more important in the early game. Do note that this type of specialty sadly doesn't upgrade the speed of the creature. Both Earth Elemental specialists (Thunar and Erdamon) are identical, starting with Tactics and basic Estates. While Estates will be mostly useless for a main hero, Tactics is key to positioning your slow Earth and Magma elementals forward or in other advantageous positions when the battle starts. If you choose these heroes, your priority will be getting as many earth/magma elementals as early as possible and use their upgraded damage to clear enemies. Still, sadly, even with near +100% minimum damage from the specialty (Earth goes from 4 to 9, Magma from 6 to 11), unsupported Earth Elementals barely can go toe to toe with other level 5 units due to their still overall low stats.

See also:

• List of creatures

• Comparison of Level 5 Creatures