[RyanW]

Just an idea to throw out, but perhaps the elven way of doing a lot of things is really slow. Elves don't work metals at all (my first thought was that metalworking slowly poisons an elf's connection with nature magic), but they have ways of inducing trees to produce woods with a wide range of properties. Need a building? Grow a tree in the shape you need. Need a sword? Make a tree grow a super dense branch in the appropriate shape. It takes decades, but what are decades to an elf?