Ribes petraeum
A native-only fruiting shrub that plays as a durable, self-healing bench buffer and a steady coin earner.
Rock red currant is a shrub-category card. It counts as native across Africa, East Asia and Europe, and it is invasive nowhere, so it only ever fights as a native buffer — there is no attacker version of this card. As a shrub it sits in the Competitor succession group with a firm, mid-range armor band.
Its starter attack, Tick Tumble, is available from level 1 and costs 2 Sun for 29 damage — Shakes the tick load loose onto the foe. Its free once-per-battle ability, Chaparral Climax, unlocks at level 25: Owns the dry hillside: heal 60% and +4 ATK. The advanced attack, Bramble Scramble, comes in at level 40 and costs 6 Sun for 40 damage — Two passes through the brambles. None of these moves carries the initiative rider, so this card never seizes the turn on a kill. See moves.
Reading its trait schedule, this card keeps two always-on traits. From level 10 it has sclerophylly: its tough, hard leaves shave a flat 3 damage off every incoming direct attack, on top of whatever its DEF already blocks. At level 68 it gains lignotuber, a standout defensive trait — the card becomes immune to Burn, and better still, any Burn that would land on it instead heals it for about 4% of its max HP, so fire releases this chaparral-style shrub rather than harming it. Neither trait is one of the roughly 60%-of-the-time sustain heals, so both are simply on once unlocked; for most of a card's playable life it runs on sclerophylly alone, with the lignotuber save only landing deep into leveling. It holds no Toxin trait, so striking it does not poison the attacker. See abilities.
It carries no confirmed keyword traits and is not toxic, so nothing punishes an attacker for hitting it. Its growth habit is not a climber, so it is not Moss Pole-eligible. As a fruiting shrub the useful field gear is a Calcium/Magnesium amendment for extra DEF on top of its already-firm armor, and a Phosphorus fertilizer to bank its edible-fruit coin bonus (see Gameplay uses).
At the snapshot level of 40 it reads 103 HP — including the +15% native cushion — 24 ATK and 13 DEF, a mid shrub armor value. Its opening tempo (initiative) is 46 and its sustained tempo (SPD) is 34, so it is a quick starter that eases off after turn one. Retreat costs 16 Sun. Benched, it projects an HP overshield onto your active; because it is Least-Concern, that bar is only a sliver. See stats.
By level 100 its HP climbs to 190 and its DEF hardens to 28, a genuine mid-tier wall for a shrub, while retreat rises to 33 Sun as the plant roots in. Its tempo, by contrast, has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so the quick opening it enjoys at level 40 is gone — a mature currant wins on bulk, not turn order.
As a shrub it is a Competitor. It deals a strong ×1.5 against Ruderal cards (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs), and is itself hit hard by Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), against whom its own hits are resisted to ×0.667. Against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird group it is neutral. See weaknesses & resistances.
Native-only, it plays as a bench buffer and a durable front-line body: solid HP, a firm shrub armor value and a genuinely useful ability in Chaparral Climax, which heals and buffs ATK. It is not a hard hitter, so lean on the wall-and-heal pattern rather than racing for kills. Its main non-combat value is coins: it is edible with a fruit part, so feeding it Phosphorus pays ×1.25 coins, while any other nutrient banks ×1.25 XP instead. In power terms it shifts from a tempo-led skirmisher to a bulk-led body at about level 26 — that is which edge dominates, not when it is strongest, since the card only grows more powerful as it levels.
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.