How to Rend Fiends and Immolate People: A Guide to Sorcery

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mold earth might actually be amazing depending on how your DM defines loose earth.

if it means only a pile of dirt that you just dug up, then yeah, it isn't great unless maybe you're in a freshly plowed field or something.

if it means sand and you're in a desert campaign, little bit better.

if it means anything that isn't rock, it is amazing.

It includes dirt, gravel, and loose stones.

It's still slightly more effective than a shovel.

mage hand i think is not bad so long as you remember it's a cantrip. it shouldn't be expected to do incredible things. being useful fairly often is good enough, and being able to grab the maguffin from range when you expect it to be a trap, or grabbing things through a barred window, or pulling things out of hazardous materials, or lowering containers *in* to hazardous materials, or silently "throwing" a length of rope somewhere, and so on. situations where it is helpful come up fairly often, and sorcerers have such a limited spell selection that any spell that can be used in multiple ways starts to look pretty good.

Mage Hand isn't bad. It's situational. Situational does not mean bad.

one thing i would suggest is that you go through and note which spells combine well with which metamagic rather than mentioning only twin. who knows, you might start to realize why i think careful is worth taking as one of your first two choices :)

I only mention Twin because it's not available for use with each spell, and it directly affects the power level and viability of spells. Careful is a perfectly good option, but it doesn't affect the viability of your spell choices.