Worthwhile summons (early to mid)

[Baalz]

Winter wolves and summer lions can be worthwhile sometimes for their cold/heat auras, and I've seen fall bears/spring hawks pull their weight in some situations.

Storm demons and to a lesser extent demon knights are effective in small enough numbers to make it worthwhile to summon them one at a time.

Several summons can be real tide turners for early fights if you buff them. Body ethereal, luck, iron warriors, quickness, regenerataion, etc. and some otherwise fairly useless guys become things that really require a specific counter to keep from dominating the early battlefield with just one or two of them. For instance:
Behemoths
Kraken
Sea serpents (mostly for the fear aura)
Dark vines
Sea trolls
Crushers

[sector24]

All of the early game summons are meat; they exist to take damage and die for your amusement. That can be useful if you have something worth protecting like archers but it is still inefficient. Your best bets are:

Cave Drakes: 22 Protection lets them last a little longer than other meat.
Vine Ogres: High HP but they fall very quickly. Much better if you are an Ivy Lord.
Bane Summons: These are all pretty decent actually, but there's a strong draw to add equipment to them which bumps up their cost.

Most of the time you are better off with a battle summon. Sprites are going to be much more useful as a meat shield than Vine Men or Vine Ogres. An Air Elemental is more cost efficient than a Wyvern, etc.

[chrispedersen]

Oh. And summon sprites is WAY worth the cost.

[Wrana]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Winter wolves and summer lions can be worthwhile sometimes for their cold/heat auras, and I've seen fall bears/spring hawks pull their weight in some situations.

Could you elaborate for Bears? Hawks are OK as they can be used to attack enemy rear.

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by Wrana

Could you elaborate for Bears? Hawks are OK as they can be used to attack enemy rear.

They're 2.5 E apiece, have high hit points, good MR and are ethereal. Even with no support they can be pretty effective blockers (depending on what you're facing obviously), slap on wooden warriors (or better stuff once your magic ramps up) and it takes quite awhile to chew through the buggers while the enemy mages keep targeting them because of their hps. They're not gonna be winning battles for you singlehandedly, but they can do a pretty good job of taking the heat off of whatever you have that will.