Nicrosil Compounding May Not be as Powerful as we Thought

[Trusk'our]

One of the common conceptions I've seen on compounding nicrosil is that you can do this in order to increase the power of one your abilities temporarily. Compound, for example, your ability to use steel Allomancy, tap it at a quick rate, and your ability to use that specific power will be increased.

I'm not sure this is how it works anymore though.

Quote

Pagerunner

When you tap the nicrosil portion of a medallion, will it run out over time? Or is it like a coppermind, where something discrete is taken, used, and returned?

Brandon Sanderson

Good question! Like a coppermind.

 

 

From this quote we see that a Nicrosilmind is similar a a Coppermind in some regards, and I think that one of the ways that it may be is that you store not only your ability to use a type of Invested power with it, but also the relative strength of that power too. For example, if a Mistborn such as Kelsier were to store his ability to use Allomantic steel, it would be more powerful than if Waxillium were to store his ability to use Allomantic steel.

This may not be the case, of course, but I think that it would be a reasonable line of thinking based on the WoB and that fact that it would help keep nicrosil from becoming too overpowered.

[+Bzhydack]

It is very plausible assuption, i think. Considering fact that Feruchemy is very dependent on basic atribute in almost all other cases, as well as is multiplicative. For example, Feruchemist with weight of 100kg when storing 50kg/s would store 50% of his weight, but if he would have weight 75kg, to store 50k/s he would need to store 66% of weight, and overall effect during taping would be smaller - because he would gain 75+50kg, while Feruchemist with weight 100kg would gain 100+50 kg. This is not an issue now, because every Feruchemist stores/taps for himself, but with Identity-les Metalminds this may generate intersting actions.

So yes, this probably how thus should work.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

I think this just makes so many more questions and assumptions about feruchemy than I can process at the moment but here are a few off the top of my head.  

What exactly is a metalmind?   How does the power in a typical metalmind fill it and work?   If I have a ring and I store half my weight in it and then cut it in half... do I then have 2 metalminds with a quarter of my weight in them?  If I compounded that and got 10x the weight could I cram it all into one metalmind and then cut it into fifths and have my entire weight in each one stored for future use?

If nicrosil and copper work the same way then how exactly do they compound?  If I store a memory and cut that coppermind in half do I end up with half a memory?   When compounded does it stick around for significantly longer or does it only compound into multiple metalminds of the same memory?  Perhaps TLR can thank his ability to compound copper on his perfect memory.  If I store Allomantic pewter in a nicrosil mind and split it in half does only one half have any power in it or do both halves offer half of the power of Allomantic pewter?  

I think if we can figure out what will happen when a metalmind is cut down and then tapped we can have a much better view of how compounding that attribute would work?  

Perhaps compounding a power just means that you need to create 10 metalminds of the same power.   

I still feel like seeing the trace metals with the bands should have taken a lot more than just wax + kelsiers steel and iron power.  Whether we can thank preservation and kelsiers shenanigans or not is a separate consideration. 

[+Harrycrapper]

18 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

One of the common conceptions I've seen on compounding nicrosil is that you can do this in order to increase the power of one your abilities temporarily. Compound, for example, your ability to use steel Allomancy, tap it at a quick rate, and your ability to use that specific power will be increased.

If I understand that WoB correctly, Nicrosil can't work like that. For ordinary Feruchemy, you're storing a specific attribute for a period of time at a specific volume. With copper feruchemy, you're taking a specific chunk of memory and storing it in the coppermind. The limitation there being that the memory degrades like normal if it is taken out of the coppermind. Unlike memories, Allomantic and Feruchemical abilities don't seem to degrade over time for individuals. So, unless there's some sort of degradation to the Investiture somewhere in the process of compounding, the ability should only ever get permanently stronger when compounding. I imagine there's likely some sort of upper limit to the strength someone could have, likely TLR was at or close to it. But, I don't see how the relative strength of the Allomancer/Feruchemist is going to hold anyone back for long given they have plenty of Nicrosil. 

[Frustration]

Medallions are more restricted than normal feruchemy

Spoiler

Calderis

Does the nicrosil portion of the medallions function identitically to how a Soulbearer Ferring would use Nicrosil? 

Brandon Sanderson

Not exactly. The medallion is a little more restrictive, for one thing.

Skyward Pre-Release AMA (Oct. 31, 2018)

 

Edited February 19, 2022 by Frustration

[Trusk'our]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Medallions are more restricted than normal feruchemy

  Hide contents

Calderis

Does the nicrosil portion of the medallions function identitically to how a Soulbearer Ferring would use Nicrosil? 

Brandon Sanderson

Not exactly. The medallion is a little more restrictive, for one thing.

Skyward Pre-Release AMA (Oct. 31, 2018)

 

I think that one way that the medallions are more restricted in regard to nicrosil is that a medallion grants only the power stored inside it. A Soulbearer could store any power they possessed, however, including the ability to use nicrosil itself, which I doubt the medallions typically grant (i.e., you could, for instance, use a medallion that grants iron Feruchemy to store or tap weight, but you wouldn't be able to use the nicrosil portion of the medallion to store or tap your own innate abilities unless it was specifically designed for that).

[cometaryorbit]

That's an interesting thought. If what is stored isn't just "X amount of strength with Allomantic steel" (or whatever), it's a discrete "power to burn Allomantic steel at strength X", which does seem to be implied... then yeah.. what would compounding do? I mean, I guess it would create multiple discrete "copies" of that power, but would tapping them all at once give you multiple times the power, or would they just be redundant?

The Bands do have Allomantic strength vastly beyond normal, though, so there must be some way to attain that.

[Trusk'our]

18 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

The Bands do have Allomantic strength vastly beyond normal, though, so there must be some way to attain that.

Now, the Band of Mourning were created by Kelsier, who is a Sliver. It may be that this has expanded his potential to use Allomancy due to his increased Connection to Preservation.

[Zoey]

On 2/18/2022 at 10:22 AM, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I think this just makes so many more questions and assumptions about feruchemy than I can process at the moment but here are a few off the top of my head.  

What exactly is a metalmind?   How does the power in a typical metalmind fill it and work?   If I have a ring and I store half my weight in it and then cut it in half... do I then have 2 metalminds with a quarter of my weight in them?  If I compounded that and got 10x the weight could I cram it all into one metalmind and then cut it into fifths and have my entire weight in each one stored for future use?

If nicrosil and copper work the same way then how exactly do they compound?  If I store a memory and cut that coppermind in half do I end up with half a memory?   When compounded does it stick around for significantly longer or does it only compound into multiple metalminds of the same memory?  Perhaps TLR can thank his ability to compound copper on his perfect memory.  If I store Allomantic pewter in a nicrosil mind and split it in half does only one half have any power in it or do both halves offer half of the power of Allomantic pewter?  

I think if we can figure out what will happen when a metalmind is cut down and then tapped we can have a much better view of how compounding that attribute would work?  

Perhaps compounding a power just means that you need to create 10 metalminds of the same power.   

I still feel like seeing the trace metals with the bands should have taken a lot more than just wax + kelsiers steel and iron power.  Whether we can thank preservation and kelsiers shenanigans or not is a separate consideration. 

Well, on the memories thing, we know it works in a way where it is all stored together inside it as discrete memories. Rather than a continuous blob. Also, on compounding those two metals, Brandon has been specifically very tight lipped about them. So it is something he has big plans for. 

[cometaryorbit]

On 2/19/2022 at 5:03 PM, Trusk'our said:

Now, the Band of Mourning were created by Kelsier, who is a Sliver. It may be that this has expanded his potential to use Allomancy due to his increased Connection to Preservation.

Hmm, possibly. That might also explain TLR's Allomantic strength being seemingly so much greater than Elend's even though the HoA Epigraphs state his "essential Allomantic strength" was the same as the other original Allomancers - maybe his 'base strength' was Lerasium level but the 'Sliver effect' boosted it? (Although to be fair TLR was probably a Savant in Soothing and likely other metals he used a lot, and Elend wasn't.)

But Kelsier is more Connected to Ruin than Preservation, and that doesn't make him a weirdly weak Mistborn. So it might be more than just Connection.

OTOH, Vin didn't seem to get Allomantically stronger between WoA and HoA - but then she didn't actually use the power, if that matters.