Citrus hystrix
A citrus that fights like a tree — walling on defence, fuelling the bench with Sun, and paying coins.
Kaffir lime (makrut lime) is a small citrus tree native across East Asia, Oceania and South & Southeast Asia and invasive in South America. In the game it classifies as a broadleaf tree, so despite being a citrus it carries a tree's wall-like DEF. It is an edible fruit, and in cold regions it is a plant for a pot indoors.
The kit unlocks in three stages, so most cards below the level-40 snapshot are still filling it in. The starter, Acorn Drop, is there from level 1 at 2 Sun — Drops mast — also nicks the bench. It lands for 26 damage as a native buffer and 28 as an invasive attacker. The free once-per-battle ability, Leaf Litter, comes online at level 25: Buries the ground in litter — the foe's whole bench withers. The advanced attack, Buttress Bash, arrives at level 40 for 6 Sun and hits for 34 native / 36 invasive — Swings a buttress root and pins the foe.
This card keeps two always-on traits, drawn from its category pool and read straight off its schedule (the rest of the pool is dropped for good). The first is live for most of the card's life; the second stacks on late.
It carries no growth-habit that makes it Moss Pole-eligible. A Calcium/Magnesium soil amendment adds flat DEF, which suits a card built to hold ground; see field gear.
Read at the level-40 snapshot, where every slot is unlocked, it shows 103 HP with 32 DEF, 16 Sun to retreat, and tempo pips of 13 initiative (which orders turn 1) and 34 SPD (every turn after). As a native it takes a +15% health cushion (103 vs the base) and, while benched, projects a green overshield bar onto your active; as an invasive it swaps that for reach — attack climbs to 28 against its native 23 — at the cost of Faustian self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack, and it concedes 2 prizes when knocked out. Damage is diminishing armour — a hit scales by its attack over attack-plus-DEF, so a big attacker punches through cover a small one cannot, and poison ignores DEF entirely. See stats and the overshield.
By level 100 the floor-to-cap law has carried it well past that snapshot: health rises to 190 (native) / 165 (invasive), attack to 42 / 54, and retreat stiffens to 33 Sun as it roots down. DEF climbs to 74 — a genuine wall, the reward for being a tree — while the inverted tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so it wins fights by outlasting, not by moving first. It is monotonically stronger the higher it levels; the tempo it loses is only a small turn-order lever.
Roughly USDA zone 10a — it should come through winters that bottom out near -0 °C. Colder than that and it wants shelter, a wall, or a winter indoors. In its own terms it runs from a cold edge of 15.9 °C to a warm edge of 29.9 °C, a Tropical band. For most players that reads as a houseplant or a plant for a sheltered, frost-free spot — a wall, a greenhouse, or a winter indoors. Treat the zone as a rough guide, not a promise: it comes from a regression whose error runs a little over one full zone, which is why the card hedges it as roughly.
The card's climate chip is the player-facing form of all that — it reads your current location, not the plant's homeland, so it changes as you travel.
| Chip | What it means | Battle XP |
|---|---|---|
| Thrives here | your local winter low and summer heat both sit inside its range | x2 |
| In range | it survives where you are but sits near one of its edges | x1.25 |
| Colder than its range | your winters drop below what it tolerates; outdoors it needs protection | no bonus |
| Hotter than its range | your summers run past its warm edge | no bonus |
The chip's only effect is on battle XP: a card that thrives or sits in range banks a multiplier when it fights, and nothing else — damage, stats, growth speed, catch rate and the coin economy are all untouched by climate. A reading of colder than its range is usually just a fact about the winter outside your window, not a verdict on the plant.
On the succession wheel this is a Competitor. It strikes Ruderal cards — annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs — for ×1.5 damage, and takes ×1.5 in return from Specialist cards — succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes. Every other matchup is neutral.
A durable dual-role card: it walls on DEF, Withers attackers with Tannin Load, and from level 68 its Network projects a gold Sun overshield onto your active. Invasive, it presses a higher attack; native, it buffers and fuels the bench. It is slow off the mark but tanky enough not to mind. As an edible citrus, its matching fruit fertilizer (Phosphorus) pays ×1.25 coins, making it a coin engine too. A strong, flexible pick.
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.