Moves

The three slots

Your kit fills in as you grow. The starter attack is there from the start; the ability and the advanced attack unlock later.

Slot	Unlocks	Sun cost	Type
Starter attack	Level 1	2 (free from level 85)	attack
Ability	Level 25	Free, once per battle	ability
Advanced attack	Level 40	6 (2 from level 85)	attack

Two more level gates sit alongside them: in-battle Sun regen switches on at level 52, and the level-85 capstone discounts both attacks. The always-on trait risers are separate again — level 10 and level 68, see abilities.

Attacks can be spammed as long as you can pay the Sun. The ability is free but fires only once per battle, so save it for the swing that matters. With an empty Sun bar you're attack-locked — the free ability (if unused) is your only guaranteed play, since retreating also costs Sun.

The damage formula

Every attack starts from its own power, adds a slice of your effective ATK, and then the target's DEF takes a share of it:

damage = round( (power + 0.35 × ATK) × ATK ÷ (ATK + target DEF) × matchup ), minimum 1.

• Power is the move's signature strength: its power weight (the dmg numbers in the examples below) × 26. Annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs get ×1.25 on it, so a soft-bodied plant's attacks still land. The power number shown on a move in battle is the first bracket, before DEF and matchup (added up over every hit of a multi-hit move).
• ATK ÷ (ATK + DEF) is the armour. DEF is diminishing, not a flat subtraction: equal ATK and DEF halves the hit, DEF at a third of your ATK still lets three quarters through, and no amount of DEF stops a hit outright. A bigger attacker punches through the same DEF better, and poison ignores DEF entirely.
• A handful of traits add a small flat armour on top (Waxy Cuticle, Sclerophylly and similar, about 3 each). That comes off after the ratio, and the hit still deals at least 1.

That damage drains the target's overshield segments front-first before it touches base HP. A few effects ignore the shield entirely (see below).

The matchup term is the succession wheel (type advantage): ×1.5 when your group beats the target's, ×0.667 when it's resisted, ×1 otherwise. Status immunities like warded and staked are a separate mechanic — see Statuses.

Effect vocabulary

Moves carry riders on top of (or instead of) raw damage. A damage value of 0 means pure utility.

• multi — strike several times in one turn.
• poison / burn / wither / bind / dormant / blight — apply a status: damage-over-time, a second damage-over-time on its own stack pool, −ATK, no retreat, skip next attack, or deny healing.
• lifesteal — heal for a fraction of damage dealt (costs Sun, like every heal — see below).
• heal — restore a fraction of your own max HP (costs Sun, and on an attack it connects 3 in 4 times — see below).
• splash — hit one benched foe for a fraction of the damage.
• spread — bench AoE: hit several (or all) benched foes, optionally applying a status too.
• buffAtk / rampant — a one-time ATK boost, or a persisting one.
• buffSpd — a persisting +SPD you keep for the rest of the match. The sustained counterpart to initiative below: it doesn't win one turn outright, it re-seats the turn order from the next round on.
• shove — force the target out of the active slot and swap one of its own benched plants in. Not the defender's choice, so rooted turns and Bind don't stop it; Canopy Anchorage refuses it outright, and it's a no-op against a lone wild with no bench.
• wildfire — the one rider that branches on your own nativity. A native user heals itself and the native plants on its bench; an invasive user damages itself and its entire bench regardless of nativity. So an invasive active in front of a native bench is punished by fire.
• motherTree — averages your own bench's HP, fainted plants included, which makes it a limited revive. At the Canopy riser it averages bench Sun as well.
• initiative — against a wild plant, act first this turn regardless of tempo (if both sides bring one they cancel, and the normal order decides). In the arena it rewards a finish instead: if the strike itself knocks the target out, you keep the turn and act again — but nothing is owed unless the struck plant really dies, so a Resprout save or a healing tick that pulls it back off 0 denies the extra action. (Reseed doesn't deny it: the parent still died, it just left a seedling behind.)
• seedRain — flat damage plus flat healing that bypasses the overshield on both ends.

Bind lands on a chance. Unlike the other status riders, a bind isn't guaranteed — so a faster plant can no longer lock a slower one in place every turn. It takes hold 75% of the time, on a damaging move and on a pure-lockdown move (no damage — its only purpose is the bind) alike. The roll is per target per attack, so a multi-hit move does not get extra attempts at it. A whiff still deals the move's damage in full; it just applies no Bind (the target "avoids the Bind").

Heals cost Sun and can whiff. Every heal draws from your Sun bar — attack heal riders, lifesteal, and the mycorrhizal nurse all pay for the HP they restore, and a heal you can't afford simply doesn't happen (the attack still lands). On top of that, a heal riding a repeatable attack connects only 3 in 4 times — a 1-in-4 whiff. The odds are stated up front so a miss is a known risk, not a surprise; the strike itself is unaffected, only the heal fails. The once-per-battle ability heal is exempt: it's free and always connects, so save it for when you truly need the mend.

Example moves

Display names are re-skinned per species, but the effects are shared pools:

• Steady Growth — clean damage (dmg 1.0).
• Bitter Sap — dmg 0.8 plus poison for 2.
• Strangle — dmg 0.5 and makes the target skip its next attack.
• Strangling Reach — dmg 0.8, spread at half to every benched foe.
• Seed Rain — no direct hit; 10 flat damage and 10 flat heal, straight through shields.

Native vs Invasive

Moves are identical for both — nativity changes the numbers behind them, not the kit.

	Native	Invasive
ATK on attacks	Normal (with +15% HP cushion)	Wider ATK ceiling (introduced-breadth aggression) — hits harder as it matures
Cost of hitting	None	Faustian self-damage (about 10 + level) to your lowest-HP benched ally on every damaging attack

An invasive's higher ATK punches through DEF better (the armour share is ATK ÷ (ATK + DEF), so more ATK keeps more of the hit) and chews through shields fast, but each swing bleeds your own bench. Read Nativity before you build around one.

See also: Combat Overview, Abilities.