Most important is switching your resistant gems in the bottom left corner to whatever mobs you are facing. I always have one with ice, magica, poison, fire. helps a lot.
Don't have steam version cus I have the old boxed copies and those keys do not work for steam 2 lazy to buy it on steam for a second time.
My old dryad has no problems, just zoom out and instakill everything as soon as it enters the screen xD.
Also for dryad, blowpipes are badass, almost no animation for ravaged impact or darting assault.
Tangled vines help a lot rooting stronger enemies and nuking them from far away.
Using a mount is also something that the dryad works best with. so smooth to use +extra bonuses.
When you are rolling a DW grim resilience is the best skill ever, will makes spells do a lot less dmg and the hp bonus is just so damn good. This + reflective emnation makes you super tanky.
For exploring the entire map, go to like silver or something, find a lot of equipment with +vision and +run speed and run around on your mount exploring everything, including dungeons