How powerful are the Elementals post-Calamity?

[Cleretic]

About Eureka: It was my understanding that Elementals dwell everywhere in the world, it's just that the sheer concentration of life (and how ancient some of it is) in the Shroud allows them to join forces more effectively and have a say on what goes on in their forest up until the Calamity obliterated entire parts of it and the Elementals living there. The Isle of Val is very interesting because there's some messed up stuff going on with the aether there, but I'm not quite sure what would push the Elementals to go through the trouble of physically manifesting and to give us helpful effects if we happen to cross paths with them. Though didn't they also use to appear in the Shroud in 1.0? They were lvl90+ or something like that, am I getting my wires crossed here? I assume the ones chilling in Eureka are there for similar reasons Shroud Elementals used to hang out in the forest sometimes..?

The Elementals as we know them actually appeared everywhere in 1.0, they weren't a Shroud-exclusive thing. And I can't find on a quick check how high-level they were, but they were a good thirty or forty levels above what players could be.

My read on the Elementals (and this is largely speculation) is that they're essentially an environmental regulator, and they turn up wherever aether is especially wild. The Twelveswood has been that for a really long time, so they've become a permanent part of the ecosystem there, and possibly gained power through collective faith and belief, as happens sometimes. Eureka's famously a mess, so they sprung up over there. Enemies with the same model also cropped up in the Aetherfont dungeon, which is also a hotbed of aether.

I was under the impression "Kami" were also basically elementals in everything but name, with Geomancy serving the same purpose as Conjury.

This is a plausible read, albeit not one with any proper evidence, they are very similar. But I'd argue it's less because of any in-universe confluence, and more because the Elementals were already written to be very similar to Shinto kami.