Sapphire berry

Overview

Sapphire berry is less armoured than most shrubs: no more than 1 in 7 shrubs in the game sit as low as its DEF of 35 at Lv 40. Its initiative stands out too: no more than 1 in 6 of the category reach 42.

Sapphire berry fights as a shrub (categories) in the Competitor succession group. It is native to East Asia and South Asia, where it plays as a buffer, and invasive in Eastern North America, where it plays as an attacker. Anywhere else it plays neutral, with neither the native HP cushion nor the invasive attack edge (nativity).

Moves

Every card has three move slots (moves): a starter attack from Lv 1, a free once-per-battle ability from Lv 25 and an advanced attack from Lv 40. Damage is the expected hit at Lv 40, before the target's DEF and the succession wheel.

• Frère Brer — starter attack, 2 Sun. Lures it into the briar patch and feeds. Expected damage: 29, or 30 where it is invasive.
• Arrested Succession — ability, free once per battle. Stops the forest before it starts — the foe stalls and can't heal.
• Fruit Drop Kick — advanced attack, 6 Sun. Boots a load of fruit — also nicks the bench. Expected damage: 26, or 27 where it is invasive.

Always-on traits

Always-on traits arrive on two trait risers, Lv 10 and Lv 68, one trait on each; anything else its category offered is dropped for good (abilities).

• Marcescence — from Lv 10. It gets +4 DEF while at or below half HP.
• Sapromyophily — from Lv 68. Whenever the game picks one plant on its side at random — the target of a Seed Rain or of incoming Spore-drift, or the ally sent in when a shove forces the active plant out — it picks this one. A lone wild plant leaves no choice to make, so it pays off on a full bench.

Items and economy

• It is not edible, so an N/P/K amendment on it earns 25% more battle XP.
• A Ca/Mg amendment adds +2 DEF.
• Catching it in a wild battle where it is invasive pays a stewardship bounty of 11 coins on top of the 30 a catch pays.

Stats

Every number here is the card without per-card genetics, which nudge HP, ATK, sustained tempo, initiative, retreat cost and DEF on the plant you actually own (stats). HP, ATK, DEF and retreat climb in a straight line from Lv 1 to Lv 100, while both tempo stats fall. A native's ATK is the neutral figure. An invasive's HP is the neutral figure.

Stat	Lv 40	Lv 100
HP (neutral)	165	356
HP (native)	189	410
ATK (neutral)	23	41
ATK (invasive)	26	49
DEF	35	83
Initiative	42	0.69
Sustained tempo (SPD)	10	0.17
Retreat cost (Sun)	12	24

• DEF is diminishing armour: a hit is scaled by ATK ÷ (ATK + DEF), so a strong attacker pushes through armour a weak one can't, and Poison ignores DEF entirely.
• Tempo: initiative decides who acts first on turn 1 and sustained tempo decides every turn after; it opens faster than it cruises. In a wild battle, a tie goes to you. Both fall as it grows, and by Lv 100 every plant is down to a fraction of a point — which is why the Lv 100 tempo column reads in decimals while the rest are whole numbers.
• Retreat: switching it out costs 12 Sun at Lv 40, and after it enters the active slot it must stay 1 turn before it can switch out.
• Sun is what attacks cost. Its bar holds 120, and an empty bar leaves it unable to attack, though its free ability still works.
• Refilling: out of battle it regains one Sun every 15 minutes at Lv 1, rising to 3 times that pace by Lv 45. Above Lv 52 it also regains Sun during battle, up to 4 a turn at Lv 100, and from Lv 85 its starter attack is free and its advanced attack costs 2 Sun.
• Benched as a native, it adds a green overshield bar to your active plant sized by its conservation status (Least Concern): 1.9% of the active's max HP. Direct attacks drain that bar before HP; Poison, Burn and recoil go straight to HP.
• As an invasive, each damaging attack costs its lowest-HP benched ally 49 HP at Lv 40, one more per level, and in a Standard 25 arena match knocking it out is worth 2 prizes instead of 1.

Hardiness

USDA zone 4, per Trees and Shrubs Online (Johnson 2024) — it should come through winters that bottom out near -34 °C. Colder than that and it wants shelter, a wall, or a winter indoors. The zone comes from a regression with an error of about one full zone, so treat it as a guide rather than a promise.

Its measured range runs from a cold edge of -3.3 °C to a warm edge of 28.1 °C, in the cool-temperate band, and it is wide-ranging. These are not the same kind of number as the zone above, which is why they look so far apart: the cold edge is how cold the coldest month typically gets across the places it grows, while a hardiness zone is quoted on the extreme annual low, and that runs far below any month's figure. The card's climate chip compares this measured range with where the player is standing, and the only thing it affects is battle XP.

Chip	Meaning	Battle XP
Thrives here	the local winter low and summer heat both sit inside its range	×2
In range	it survives here, but near one of its edges	×1.25
Colder than its range	winters here go below what it tolerates	no bonus
Hotter than its range	summers here run past its warm edge	no bonus

Succession matchups

Sapphire berry is in the Competitor group (weaknesses and resistances). Its hits land at ×1.5 on Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatic plants and bulbs) and at ×0.67 on Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes). In return, Specialist plants hit it at ×1.5 and Ruderal plants at ×0.67. Everything else is neutral.

Playing it

• As a native it is a buffer: its HP cushion, and the overshield bar it lends your active plant from the bench, are what it adds to a team.
• As an invasive it is an attacker: its extra ATK comes with damage to its own bench on every damaging attack.
• Over its life, its power overtakes its tempo at Lv 7 as a native, at Lv 8 as an invasive and at Lv 9 neutral: below that level it plays as a fast skirmisher, above it as a heavyweight. Its HP, ATK and DEF only grow as it levels, so the crossover is never a reason to hold it back. The Total power gallery below shows each crossover, with the card at that level and fully grown.