Artemisia campestris
The Field wormwood (Artemisia campestris) is a Perennial herb that plays as a defensive buffer.
The Field wormwood is a wiry aromatic perennial of dry ground. In battle it plays as a Perennial herb. It is native to Africa, East Asia, and Europe and listed as invasive nowhere, so it fills the defensive buffer role only.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. The starter attack, Crown Split, is available from Level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing 44 as a native and 44 as an invasive. Its effect: Splits at the crown and strikes from both.
The free ability, Perennating Bud (Level 25), costs no Sun because it is once per battle: Breaks a stored bud: heal 40%.
The advanced attack, Deep Root Strike (Level 40, 6 Sun), deals 43 native and 43 invasive: Draws on deep roots for a heavy blow. Most cards you meet are well below the Level 40 snapshot these numbers are read at, and unlock their kit slot by slot as they level.
This card actually keeps two always-on traits, drawn from its category pool with the rest discarded. From Level 10 it carries Basal Rosette, a flat DEF bonus from a grazing-resistant rosette. From Level 68 a second, different trait stacks on top: Resprout, a roughly 60% chance to survive one otherwise-lethal hit at a quarter of its health. Both are working traits — there are no inert abilities in the game — and each arrives at full strength on the riser shown, so for much of the card's life it plays with only the earlier of the two.
It carries no Toxin or Thorns trait, so it inflicts no contact recoil on an attacker. Because its body is soft, a Cloche is a valuable ward against the damage-over-time Poison that bypasses its overshield, and a Cal-Mag amendment shores up its thin armor. See field gear for the full item list and nativity for how region sets its role.
Read at the Level 40 snapshot, its DEF is 1 — a low-to-middling band — firmer than a weed but no wall. It retreats for 12 Sun. Turn 1 is ordered by its initiative (41) and every turn after by its SPD (40). Its opening and sustained tempo sit close together, so its turn order holds roughly steady through a fight. No region lists it as invasive, so it plays purely as a buffer: a +15% HP cushion (103 HP) and, from the bench, an HP overshield onto your active. It has no attacker stance. The overshield is a bench-built extra ring: up to four green HP bars from benched natives (drained by direct damage first, but bypassed by poison, recoil and splash) and up to two gold Sun bars from benched Network trees.
By Level 100 its DEF has crept up its modest band to 1 while HP grows toward 190; retreat rises to 23 Sun and the brisk early tempo sinks to roughly 1% of cap. It matures into a sturdier body that no longer strikes first.
It is a Competitor on the succession wheel: it crowds out Ruderals (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs), hitting them for 1.5× and resisting their blows, but is outlasted by Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes), which turn its 1.5× disadvantage against it. The Weird categories (carrion-aroids, carnivores, mycotrophs and vascular parasites) sit off the wheel and trade neutrally with it. See weaknesses & resistances and categories.
A perennial herb with hard-hitting split-crown attacks and Resprout for resilience. Native-only, but one of the stronger herb attackers here — a durable, self-recovering skirmisher. It has no resolved edible part, so any fertilizer you feed it banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins — a growth boost, not an income stream. On the total-power curve its native crossover falls around Level 28: below it the card leans on its turn-order edge, above it on raw bulk and attack — it is monotonically stronger as it levels, so keep growing it.
Leveling trades speed for power. A plant’s tempo (SPD + INI, the turn-order edge) fades as it grows, while its power (HP + ATK + DEF, net of the rising Sun cost to retreat) climbs. The crossover is the level where power overtakes tempo: below it the plant is a fast skirmisher, above it a heavyweight. Shown for each stance this plant can actually hold — native adds a HP cushion, invasive an attack edge, neutral neither — with the card at its crossover and fully grown at Lv 100.