[mwatt]

You already understand the important thing for Druids at low levels: You will need to use a mixture of spells and melee with DS for optimal leveling.

For me, another important strategy was which mobs to fight at what level. For instance, Baby Elephants and low dark blue elephants in SK are great at 17. Darters are harder. Hence, I pulled Elephants over Darters whenever I could.

Also, on the topic of mob selection, the type of mob will influence how much, if any melee you will be doing, as will your current level of health and mana. Thus, it is hard to give you an exact blue print. What you posted is up the right alley, just keep working on refining those general approaches under different circumstances.

Charm Animal, as has been mentioned, is also very effective for a Druid. You can snare him before charming if you like to reduce danger when charm breaks.... but charm holds quite well for Druids. Again, SK is a great place to use Charm Animal.