Last session we entered a mine, because we think our bad guy is there. It's a mine bild to find a specific stone sort that is ligthly magical. As a cover-up we decided to mine.
I am playing the cleric, and I can't mine. But I can summon a Earth elemental, but none of us had a clear idea of what a earth elemental can see underground, do they notice different types of stone? To me it seems al logical way to navigate for them. What do you think?
They've got Darkvision (implying they have regular sight) and Tremorsense as senses.
I say it wouldn't be too far fetched for a creature from the Elemental Plane of Earth to distinguish between different types of stone and ores, especially given that they have normal vision (but in black and white underground).
Or to be more accurate, they definitely should be able to distinguish them, but with normal vision they would be able to accurately describe what they look like (not sure if they know the human words for these ores though, does Terran have its own words for things like gold and diamonds?).