I understand the reasoning behind the change, but I still prefer the old dropdown layout. It's just a personal preference though. I'm one of those players who make sure every message, notice, alert and whatnot get marked as READ, and having a separate page for the logs essentially doubles my loading time to get to them. It's not a big deal though, so I'm not complaining.
When you first start your earnings will be low but as you play your earnings will increase according to the amount of time and energy you put into playing.
^ This.
A Lv 1 mob is not gonna reward you with the same amount of Dragon Points as a Lv 100 mob, and so on and so forth. Village buildings don't raise their own levels either. And there's also other stuff which I don't really want to delve into detail.
If you spend coins on the game, then you're going to get an advantage, but it's not really necessary. You would mostly be exploring and grinding at the start anyway. As you keep playing, you'll most likely be able to make a measured decision on your own whether to invest on the game or not.
I'm not sure if it's still ongoing, but there was a promotion where you can become eligible to receive 1000 Dragon Points daily if you contributed to this thread (this one, the one that we're on) by participating in meaningful discussion and posting your character's name.
Character Name: Rimuru