Every plant walks into a fight as either a defender or an aggressor, and the arena's region — not the plant — decides which.
When a battle starts, the game checks the arena's region against the species' known ranges. If the region falls inside the plant's native range, the card is native. If it falls inside its invasive range, the card is invasive. Anything else is absent (neutral) — no bonuses, no penalties. Both PvE and PvP compute this the same way, so the same plant can be a buffer in one region and an attacker in another. That is the spine of the whole battle system: one card, two completely different roles depending on where you fight.
| Native (buffer) | Invasive (attacker) | |
|---|---|---|
| Stat bonus | HP ×1.15 | ATK ×1.75 (×1.4 if toxic) |
| Overshield | Benched natives project green HP overshield segments onto the active | Contributes no HP segments |
| Downside | None | "Faustian" self-damage (~10 + level) to its own lowest-HP benched ally on every damaging attack |
| Reward on KO | None | Coin stewardship bounty (wild) / extra prizes (PvP) |
Natives are a wall. The 15% HP boost is a personal cushion, but the real value is on the bench: every benched native projects a green HP overshield segment onto your active, sized by the contributor's rarity (up to four segments, each about a sixth of the active's max HP). Direct attacks chew through those segments before they touch base HP. Keep a native bench and your front-liner is hard to drop.
Watch the leaks: poison, recoil (thorns), seedRain, and haustorial-drain all bypass the overshield. A full shield won't save a plant that's being poisoned to death.
Invasives hit brutally hard — nearly double ATK — but every damaging attack burns your own bench. That self-damage lands on your lowest-HP benched ally, so an aggressive invasive can knock out its own team from behind. Race the clock: win before the Faustian bill comes due. The upside is loot — subduing an invasive wild pays a bounty, and in PvP a KO'd invasive hands over extra prizes.
Two things stay open to everyone. The gold Sun overshield comes from the network passive, not nativity — any plant can project it. And mycorrhiza healing patches up any injured benched ally regardless of native status. Reseed Seedling tokens count as neutral and get no native perks.