Golden Pothos

Overview

Golden Pothos is an epiphyte, and it plays as a Epiphyte card. It is native to Oceania and invasive nowhere, so in the arena it only ever fights as a native buffer, never an attacker.

Moves

• Tug (unlocks at level 1, costs 2 Sun) deals 26 damage. Hauls itself in first: first in the wild, acts again on a kill.
• Aerial Draw (unlocks at level 25) is the free once-per-battle ability: Draws water straight from the air: heal 40%. It costs no Sun.
• Trichome Trap (unlocks at level 40, costs 6 Sun) deals 23 damage. Combs moisture from the air — heal 30%.

None of its moves carries an initiative rider, so it never seizes first strike or an extra turn — its turn order is set by its tempo (see Stats). As a toxic plant it also carries a Poison rider: every damaging attack it lands Poisons the target (2 stacks). Poison is damage-over-time that ignores DEF and slips past the overshield, so it wears down even armored walls.

Abilities

Read off the card's actual trait schedule, it keeps these always-on traits, arriving at the levels shown:

• Toxin arrives at level 10: striking it Poisons the attacker (2 stacks, from its toxic toxicity), so it bites back on contact — and this fires in player-versus-player battles too. Sulfur soil does not neutralize it.
• Sapromyophily — a taunt — arrives at level 68: wherever the engine would pick a single victim out of a group (a forced swap, a chip aimed at one benched plant), it draws that pick onto itself instead of an ally, shielding your bench. Against a lone wild plant there is no choice to redirect, so it does nothing there — the honest caveat.

Features

It carries the Toxin keyword. It is Moss Pole-eligible — a climber — so a Moss Pole is a natural fit. A Calcium/Magnesium amendment is the most useful slot for its soft body; a Cloche shields an attacker from contact poison.

Stats

Read at level 40, where every move is unlocked: HP 103, ATK 15, DEF 1, retreat 12 Sun. Its tempo splits the usual way — initiative 41 orders turn 1 and SPD 40 orders turn 2 onward — and it holds a fairly steady tempo across the fight.

Being native-only, it always fights as the buffer: the +15% HP cushion is baked into that HP, and while benched it projects a green HP overshield bar onto your active. It never takes the invasive attacker role, so it pays no Faustian self-damage and concedes no attacker prizes.

At Level 100

Maturity swells its HP toward 190, but its soft category keeps DEF at only 1 — it never becomes a wall. Retreat rises to 23 Sun and its inverted tempo bottoms out; it ends soft but bulky, and a strong attacker still punches through it.

Weaknesses & Resistances

Golden Pothos is in the Specialist group on the succession wheel. It deals x1.5 to Competitors (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs, broadleaf trees) and takes x1.5 from the Ruderal group (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs), whose defense resists it to x0.667.

Gameplay uses

A hardy native epiphyte and one of only two Moss-Pole cards here: it poisons attackers on contact and, once grown, taunts single-target picks onto itself. A durable bench-shield. It is not edible, so any fertilizer you feed it banks x1.25 XP rather than coins. The Total power gallery below marks its crossover — where its rising bulk overtakes its falling speed — at level 31; it only grows stronger with level, so never hold it back.