Elemental (Category)

The Elementals are a special type of pet, each involving a sort of questline to improve, and eventually evolve, them. It usually takes quite a bit of time and resources to get them to their full potential, but are often the strongest pets of their respective class. They all start with a negative bonus to campaigns and usually with negative, or very low, total growth.

Gathering the Elementals is a process done gradually, since unlocking several negative growth pets at once can do more harm than good. They can be unlocked in any order, although some are more difficult than others. Aether, however, should be unlocked ASAP since its starting growth gets lower the more Challenge Points you have.

One of the Elementals, Aether, gets an improvement to their campaign contributions the more Elementals you have unlocked.

Undine

The first Elemental is Undine, the Water Elemental. She is unlocked using 2 Alchemist pets and is improved with water materials. She is a Rogue specialist with a special Area-of-Effect attack that is used in dungeons.

Gnome

The second Elemental is Gnome, the Earth Elemental. He is unlocked using an item found in Item Campaigns and is improved with earth materials. He is a Defender specialist with a special shield that can help protect pets in dungeons, as well as increasing defense of all pets in the team.

Salamander

The third Elemental is Salamander, the Fire Elemental. He is unlocked by Blacksmith pets and is improved with fire materials. He is a Supporter specialist that has an additional healing action that heals all pets at once.

Sylph

The fourth Elemental is Sylph, the Wind Elemental. She is unlocked by finding an item in the Mountain dungeon and is improved with wind materials. She is a Mage specialist that can do more attacks per turn the higher her Wind Element stat is.

Aether

The fifth Elemental is Aether, the Neutral Elemental. They are unlocked by finding an item from the Newbie Grounds dungeon boss and improved through a similar process. They are an Adventurer specialist that has an ever-improving campaign bonus to Growth Campaigns.

Early elementals

Unlocking Aether as early as possible is generally recommended. Since the sooner you open it, the stronger the Aether will be, its starting growth is negative and the more ChP you have, the less growth it has. Opened before any challenges, Aether will have 0 growth. But with the other 4 elementals, everything is not so clear.

Downsides

Elementals have -33333 starting growth and a huge campaign penalty. The trap here lies in the fact that there are many pets whose evolution requires that each pet have a minimum growth or level. The Sphinx needs 3500 normal levels for each pet to evolve, and the Shark, one of the best GC pet for a long time, which is also relatively easy to obtain, needs at least 5k growth for everyone.

To compensate for this, you will feed the elementals with better food (which other pets could eat), send them to dungeons (most likely a mountain) instead of stronger pets, which will obviously slow down your development.

Benefits

Elementals for development and subsequent evolution need special resources, for the gathering of which you need opened elementals, the sooner you start collecting them, the easier it will be for you in the future. The same thing, although to a much lesser extent, can be said about growth. The difference between having a good GC and not having one can be very dramatic. But by eating at least free food, receiving growth bonuses from the golden dragon and LDs, as well as from the D1 Mountain event, elementals will slowly but surely be able to increase growth, saving you a lot of time by the time you have good GC and the ability to mine in dungeons and process all the tons of resources needed for the quest and evolution. 4-5 bad pets are better than 0 pets, yes, the only areas where elementals will be useful are dungeons and the event campaign, but the presence of elementals gives the rest of the pets a free hand, allowing them to do other things. In particular, the author of these lines turned most wildcards into adventurers, making them early members of the GC, and then into slaves of the IC as i gets better specialists. The first (main) dungeon team is filled with specialists, while the second is filled with elementals and another air pet, giving the elementals not only growth, but experience and dungeon levels that will sooner or later come in handy later.

Ya you can basically ignore all that. If you manage to find yourself in the bad game state of having all (or most) elementals unlocked early and you cannot revert save, I guess go read it and try to make the best of what you have. But the "benefits" of all/most early elementals are extremely limited. Unlocking the pets early won't get you to their evo much faster as you simply don't have the resources or gamestate to do them. If you want to unlock them early, pick ONE (I suggest Undine for various reasons) and ignore the rest till after Shark (+/- Sphinx) evo.

Summary

Don't unlock all elementals early. Early elementals will deprive you of the ability to evolve some pets for a long time, will slow down the farming of resources from dungeons for a long time since you will only have one strong team capable of clearing depth 2. There are some benefits of LIMITED early elementals, so if you decide to get some early, pick ONE and build that one. This can maximize your elemental benefits while minimizing their negative side effects.