Level 9 is probably appropriate for summon dragon if it somewhat reliably gets you things like golden dragons, quicksilver dragons, etc. I agree, it's not as powerful as say, firestorm, but consider that most of the level 9 nuke spells are multi-school, while summon dragon in this patch is single sc...

When I'm playing offline, I'll often just pick a random species and see how it goes from there. When I'm online though, I'm usually trying to win, so I'll often be playing merfolks or spriggans, or whatever other flavour of the month is currently the most powerful (in 0.5 and earlier, I played a lot...

I've been using lair 1 since... I don't know, version 0.3.0 or so? Never once have I had a problem with it. On rare occasions I'll also use the temple. Sometimes hive, as a secondary stash, but I find lair more convenient due to how it is a hub for a bunch of other sub branches. And finally, if I'm ...