The Humble Druids
The druids are an old guild, and in the realm of batmud, that tends to mean they are an outdated one. Druids is a utility guild with a few very nice spells and a lot of nearly worthless ones. There are only a few practical reasons to be a druid: First, it's the only alternative to nuns for backrow healers. Second, they have spells important for equipment parties, most notably flex shield. Third, drain pool is a very nice spell.
Overall abilities:
Druids get some low quality blasts, some good protection spells, and a slew of utility spells, most of which are useful to the average player less than once per month. Most druid spells are VERY dependent on their percentage and your wisdom. They were improved to be somewhat more useable with low percentages, however many still aren't worth casting with less than 90% and 200 wisdom. Pretty much every druid-specific spell has a caveat or drawback. Some can only be cast at certain times of the year, most of the rest are only useful in special circumstances, and a few others just plain suck.
Druids are one of the few caster guilds to have skills not directly involved with spellcasting. They get a little camping and fire building, which can help them recover endurance points, and are experts at hiking, which is a big help for them when walking through the wilderness. Plant lore and track aren't useful as regularly, but can be useful from time to time for those with the spare experience to invest in them.
Druid Spells
Blessed warmth
An area healing spell. Since it can only be cast during the summer, it is presumably not as crappy as runic heal.
Call pigeon
Transports lightweight targeted items to your starting location. There are a few tricks and pranks you can pull with this, but on the whole it's useless, particularly because of the way the game will "clean" rooms without players in them.
Charge Staff
Charge staff reflects the mediocrity of the guild as a whole. Basically you sit around idling and dumping sps into your staff so you can cast your other spells. Probably the most boring and pointless activity in the game. I'm not especially sure what this is intended to balance, the guild simply isn't good enough that it should require such long idling sessions, and only the very longest of equipment parties would have troubles from this, and those parties suck enough that I don't think they should have to live with this kind of drawback.
Create Mud
Create mud attempts to create a mudpit underneath your target. It is cheap to study and a very effective way to entrap even large monsters for a good long while. Of course, there's not much point in bothering with it if you don't have to deal with wandering monsters.
Detect Poison
A weak version of remove poison. Useful only if you're one of the rare characters who takes druids but doesn't take tarmalens.
Drain Pool
The only uncomplicatedly nice spell druids get, drain pool will dramatically reduce your need sit around ticking during parties. Casting this spell lets you try to drain the druid pool of up to 1,000 spell points per hour for your immediate use. You'll need high spell % and wisdom to even get close to 100% of what you ask for, but this spell is still a tremendous boost to your spell point reserve, and by donating cheap sacrifice items once in a while you'll easily remain in good standing with the guild.
Drying Wind
Creates a field which periodically removes water from the room. This is usually just cast to prevent another field from being created, not for the drying effect.
Earth Blood
Gives the target a middling bonus to their maximum hitpoints and adds to some of their (cold?) resistance. Can only be cast during the winter. This can be a middling useful spell during eq parties.
Earth Power
Gives a large strength boost to the target for a while, around 10-50 points, depending on your wisdom and percentage. Lasts fairly long and is occasionally useful for meeting stat reqirements in areas or temporarily helping someone carry a heavy burden.
Earth Skin
Raises the armour level of the target for a while. Armour matters more after some recent tunes, so this spell got an incidental uptune. It can be stacked, but more than two instances of it will ruin the target's ability to dodge. Not popular outside of equipment parties.
Earthquake
Area damage blast. Monsters do great damage and stun with this spell, you on the other hand will probably not have much cause to ever cast it.
Flex Shield
A nice protection spell, flex shield helps deflect large hits, particularly criticals, and works on virtually every source of damage there is. Regrettably it has a pretty short duration compared to similar spells, except I think for the winter leader, who can have them last for like ten thousand hours.
Gem fire
Once you figure out the convoluted syntax of this spell, you can use it as a weak targetted blast of your enemies. The quality of the gem you use as a component detemines how many uses it has in it. Not very popular, but better than nothing when you need it.
Good Berry
Creates one or more berries which can be eaten for a few hit points each. The advantages of this spell are that the berries work in otherwise nonmagical areas and work instantly. The disadvantages of this spell are that it is slow, costly, the berries don't heal very much at all, and races that can't eat can't benefit from it.
Gust of Wind
Make a ship travel faster with this spell. Requires a feather, so only ducks, penguins, and owls can cast it.
Inquiry to Ahm
Gives you information about how high a player's reincarnation tax is. I never really saw the point, some basic math can give a close enough estimate. Anyway, players will sometimes be willing to pay you to cast this.
Natural transformation
Tries to create a random plant in outerworld rooms that aren't roads or ruins. Can only be cast during the spring. Not very useful.
Rain
Creates a field which periodically adds water to the room. This is usually just cast to prevent another field from being created, not for the water creation effect. It's slightly faster to cast than drying wind, but can of course cause problems for those with water allegies. Moving water can cause items on the ground to float about, but this spell is no longer useful to float away special quest items an the like.
Regeneration
Boosts the hit point and endurance point regain of the target. Popular with some soloers, but they usually use alchemist potions for this.
Reincarnation
Druids are the ones to reincarnate other players. This spell requires a water lily. Those who study it high can make some decent cash offering it to other players, and those who don't study it can enjoy being constantly pestered for reincs by complete strangers. Fumbling this spell reincs YOU.
Replenish energy
Lets you transfer some of your endurance points to another player, if you have the mistletoe required to cast this spell. This can on occasion be useful to prevent delays during experience parties.
Runic heal
A slow and inefficient healing spell. If you study it to 100% and have immensely high stats it can function about as well as minor heal. Since it only heals a fixed amount of hit points, is rather kludgy. Still, this spell makes it at least remotely possible to play a druid/monk.
Summon storm
An cold area blast. Since it can only be cast during autmn, presumably it's less crappy than earthquake.
Transfer Mana
Sometimes you'll have more spell points than you know what to do with. This spell lets you give them to another player. This is a useful ability, but has some important drawbacks. First, you need a very high wisdom and spell percentage, otherwise most will be lost in transit. Secondly, players can only get so many spell points from outside sources before they have to regenerate some on their own for a while.
Vine mantle
Requires a vine seed to cast. Is otherwise nearly identical to earth skin, except I think it lasts a bit longer.
Wither flesh
The only blast of note that druids get. It does a lot of magical damage over a period of time and will every so often manage to inflict a stun. On the downside, it has a high mana and staff charge cost. Useful during some experience parties and can also be used to solo smaller cash monsters.