Ilex glabra
A native-only perennial herb that opens with poison, self-heals twice over, and can cling to life late, but stays soft.
Inkberry is a low Perennial herb that fights as a self-healing poisoner. In this game it exists only as a native — of Eastern North America — so you always play it as a native buffer for your bench; there is no invasive attacker version. It is a middling card: it sustains itself well through a fight, but it is soft and never gains armor.
Its starter attack, Stolon Reach, unlocks at level 1 for 2 Sun and hits for about 31 as a native, leaving poison on the target. The free once-per-battle ability, Autogenic Reaction, arrives at level 25: Remakes its own ground: +6 ATK and heal 25%. — it mends the plant. The advanced attack, Taproot Canal, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (26 native) and mends the plant as it strikes. Most of your inkberries sit below level 40, where only the starter is live. None of its moves carry an initiative rider.
Inkberry keeps a single always-on trait: Resprout. Because it draws only one eligible trait, Resprout comes in at half strength on the level 10 riser and matures on the level 68 one. When it works it lets the plant survive one otherwise-lethal hit at roughly a quarter health — but it fires only about 60% of the time, so treat it as a coin-flip reprieve. See Abilities.
Inkberry carries no trait keywords, so nothing punishes an attacker for hitting it. Its poison comes from a move, not the plant — it is non-toxic, with no contact hazard ring and no passive poison rider. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a native support piece, defensive field gear helps it stay alive to keep buffing your bench.
At level 40 inkberry reads 103 HP as a native, with ATK around 23. DEF is just 1, at the soft floor of the perennial-herb band, so it takes hits with almost no armor. Its tempo is even but low: turn 1 runs on initiative (22) and every turn after on SPD (22), which sit at the same value, so it is slow both off the mark and in a long fight. Retreat costs 13 Sun. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and, while benched, projects an HP overshield onto your active. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, inkberry swells to 190 HP as a native and 42 ATK, but DEF only reaches 2 — a soft herb gains health and almost no armor, so it stays fragile against any real hitter. Retreat rises to 25 Sun and its tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so a mature one acts last against almost anything young.
As a perennial herb, inkberry is in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants for ×1.5 and takes only ×0.667 from them; it is weak to Specialist plants, which strike it for ×1.5 while resisting its blows. Against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird group the matchup is neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
Play inkberry as a self-sustaining staller: land poison early, mend through both the ability and the advanced attack, and let the status tick while it recovers. As a native buffer, its HP cushion and bench overshield help a fragile ally survive, which rounds out its worth. It is inedible, so any nutrient you feed it banks ×1.25 XP toward faster leveling. It fights as a slow, even-tempo skirmisher early and leans on its modest bulk later, crossing over around level 10 — always worth leveling.
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.