Weaknesses & Resistances

The four succession groups

The 16 categories collapse into four groups drawn from plant ecology:

• Ruderal — live-fast pioneers of disturbed ground and open water: annual-forb, grass, aquatic, bulb.
• Competitor — vigorous dominants that win the light in rich, stable conditions: perennial-herb, vine, shrub, broadleaf-tree.
• Specialist — slow stress-tolerators of shade, drought, and poor soil (the climax persisters): succulent, conifer, fern, epiphyte.
• Weird — non-photosynthetic or off-axis oddballs: carrion-aroid, carnivorous, mycotroph, vascular-parasite.

The wheel

The three competitive groups form a closed cycle — each beats one and loses to another:

Group	Beats	The ecology
Competitor	Ruderal	crowds out — dominants shade out the pioneers
Specialist	Competitor	outlasts — climax persisters hold ground competitors can't
Ruderal	Specialist	reclaims the ground from — disturbance clears old growth for pioneers

Beat your target's group and your hit is super effective (×1.5 damage); the reverse matchup is resisted (×0.667); same group is neutral (×1). The battle log calls it out: "Kudzu crowds out Dandelion! (super effective)".

Weird sits outside the wheel

Weird plants neither deal nor take a matchup multiplier — Weird against anything is always ×1. The heterotrophs, parasites, carnivores, and carrion aroids play off the competitive light-and-space axis, so they're exempt in both directions.

It stacks — and it's uncapped

The matchup multiplier compounds on top of your other ATK levers. An invasive Competitor's advanced attack into a Ruderal is roughly 1.3 × 1.75 (invasive ATK) × 1.5 (super effective) ≈ 3.4× a vanilla starter, before DEF. It's deliberately not capped yet, so lopsided matchups snowball. At the low end a resisted chip (×0.667) and flat DEF both floor at 1 damage, so the wheel effectively vanishes on weak hits.

Reading it on the card

Your card's identity readout shows your group plus what you're strong vs and weak vs. Weird cards show neither — they're off the wheel.

Native vs Invasive

The wheel is the same in either role, but because it multiplies ATK it pays off most on offense.

	How the wheel helps
Native (buffer)	On defense — resist an incoming super-effective hit down to ×0.667
Invasive (attacker)	On offense — land ×1.5 on top of your ×1.75 attacker ATK

This is separate from status immunities (warded, staked, Sulfur): those block specific statuses, while the wheel scales raw damage.