Allomantic Electrum: underrated?

[+robardin]

In "Mistborn: The Hero of Ages", Vin and Elend have discovered Electrum, the alloy of gold that Elend calls "poor man's atium".

Its Allomantic effect is for the burner to see his/her own potential future(s) "for a few seconds" - the counterpart to gold's effect being to see one's own alternate past. They use it for its side effect of confusing an atium burner's future visions involving the one burning electrum.

In another Cosmere novella, "Sixth of the Dusk", we see someone (the eponymous 6-D) with the (bonded) ability to see visions of his possible near-futures, and using it to avoid deadly traps, or to sense great impending danger.

So it seems like it could be a "poor man's atium" in the offensive sense as well as the defensive, then, in the post-Catacendre world that is without atium. In a fight, the ability to see which of your actions or inactions would lead to you getting hurt or killed in the next few seconds, or to spot any possible quick-winning moves you could pull off, would be extremely valuable.

And an Electrum-Compounding Twinborn could possibly see further into his/her own future than just a few seconds, or else just super-leverage a supply of Electrum to be able to walk around as a constant Oracular savant who could never be surprised without extremely elaborate planning.
 

[Kurkistan]

Sadly Compounding won't do the trick here, since you compound the Feruchemical effect, not the Allomantic one. So Double-Electrum just nets you a lot of (*checks*) determination.

--

That aside yes I agree Allomantic electrum has a lot more utility than we see in the books. As does Brandon.

Source:

Quote

[7:39]
 Kurk: Is it practical for an Oracle to get more out of electrum than Vin and Elend tried to?
 A: Yes. It is totally possible.
 Q: So if you could see  your shadow wince when it turned left, you would think "Oh, Mrs. Peabody's around that corner. I probably shouldn’t turn left!"
 A: It is possible to squeeze more out of it than they did.

Source

Quote

How does Electrum work?

Electrum can see future shadows only as far in the future as is done with atium in the books. They use it to counter atium in that they see their own future shadow fighting, and if they see their shadow get hit by an attack, they know to avoid that attack, and they change their own future. This compounds the future shadows they see, which makes it practically as effective at countering atium as atium itself.

While the scope of an electrum shadow is very limited, it could be useful in many situations. Like if you were playing tennis, you’d be able to look at your shadow and tell if you managed to hit the ball or not, and adjust accordingly. That would still take a lot of practice to master, but it could be very effective

 

[+robardin]

53 minutes ago, Kurkistan said:

Sadly Compounding won't do the trick here, since you compound the Feruchemical effect, not the Allomantic one. So Double-Electrum just nets you a lot of (*checks*) determination.

Right... Now I'm thinking of that computer game, "Undertale". STAY DETERMINED!

 

[Ironeyes]

Ironically enough, I just woke up from a dream in which I was an electrum misting and using it to great effect. Weird. 

[Weltall]

Yeah, electrum is definitely a bit underrated. I mean, it's awesome on its own as an atium counter but it's got potential uses that the characters haven't really explored because they either didn't have the opportunity (the end of the world being a pressing issue) or they didn't have a need (when you have atium that also speeds up your mind to process all that future-sight, why devote time to mastering electrum?) and since we don't have any electrum-users in the Era 2 cast we probably won't see people do interesting things with it until Era 3. Miles did give us an example of a character trying to find uses for Allomantic gold and some Words of Brandon have hinted at other potential applications for that 'useless' metal so I'm sure we'll get more exploration of what's possible with lesser-used metals in future books.

[Shadeshadow227]

Electrum is honestly amazing. If you could practice at differentiating and separating the Electrum Shadows into actual detectable paths rather than a whirling mass of incomprehensible images, you basically have limited precognition. Which would be VERY useful. You could never be surprised, you could avoid bullets before someone shoots, and there are a million other applications.

[Yata]

24 minutes ago, Shadeshadow227 said:

Electrum is honestly amazing. If you could practice at differentiating and separating the Electrum Shadows into actual detectable paths rather than a whirling mass of incomprehensible images, you basically have limited precognition. Which would be VERY useful. You could never be surprised, you could avoid bullets before someone shoots, and there are a million other applications.

Electrum is really good as Allomantic metal, It sucks just because we compare it with the Atium...but is actually unfair

[Szmit]

On 19.12.2016 at 5:24 PM, Yata said:

Electrum is really good as Allomantic metal, It sucks just because we compare it with the Atium...but is actually unfair

Electrum has one BIG advantage over atium - availability. Not only because you can afford it, but also because you can go savant. Just imagine an electrum misting with Spook's level of specialization. It could be theoriticaly better than atium misting (mabye, I hope so).

PS. I understand advantage of quicker thinking, I just think training could have just as good effects.

Edited December 22, 2016 by Szmit

[+robardin]

2 hours ago, Szmit said:

Electrum has one BIG advantage over atium - availability. Not only because you can afford it, but also because you can go savant. Just imagine an electrum misting with Spook's level of specialization. It could be theoriticaly better than atium misting...

Well with atium, you can see "the" future - not just your own, but what goes on around you - along with the mental ability to understand and make use of the information instantaneously. With electrum, a Misting could, with practice, pick out the best (or avoid the worst) possible outcomes in your multiple near (and uninformed) future paths, and act accordingly to "make it so". But doing crazy things like Vin grabbing an arrow in mid-flight to jam into Shan Elariel, I think that's only really possible with atium. That's because an electrum burner can "only" see their own near future, so they can do very atium-like things but only relative to what would directly affect them, or which they themselves would directly affect.

It's not clear that an Oracle burning electrum could pull off the same stunt as Vin, as that would require finding one of a huge number of your own possible futures to find the really, really tiny possibilty that you would randomly (without foreknowledge) grab at the air just as the arrow passed through it, AND have the reaction time to realize hey, I can use this arrow as a weapon, and stab with it.

Maybe a Twinborn with Allomantic electrum and Feruchemical zinc (speed of mind) who flared both?  Whoa.

 

[Savanorn]

9 hours ago, robardin said:

Well with atium, you can see "the" future - not just your own, but what goes on around you - along with the mental ability to understand and make use of the information instantaneously. With electrum, a Misting could, with practice, pick out the best (or avoid the worst) possible outcomes in your multiple near (and uninformed) future paths, and act accordingly to "make it so". But doing crazy things like Vin grabbing an arrow in mid-flight to jam into Shan Elariel, I think that's only really possible with atium. That's because an electrum burner can "only" see their own near future, so they can do very atium-like things but only relative to what would directly affect them, or which they themselves would directly affect.

It's not clear that an Oracle burning electrum could pull off the same stunt as Vin, as that would require finding one of a huge number of your own possible futures to find the really, really tiny possibilty that you would randomly (without foreknowledge) grab at the air just as the arrow passed through it, AND have the reaction time to realize hey, I can use this arrow as a weapon, and stab with it.

Maybe a Twinborn with Allomantic electrum and Feruchemical zinc (speed of mind) who flared both?  Whoa.

 

Actually a good point Robardin.

The way I think about it, I think Electrum allows you to easily avoid the worst possible futures -the ones where you are hit, killed, maimed, etc - while Atium allows you to select for the best possible futures, the ones where you maximize your use of the environment, weapons on hand or the foe to win the fight. 

[Szmit]

On 22.12.2016 at 6:32 PM, robardin said:

Well with atium, you can see "the" future - not just your own, but what goes on around you - along with the mental ability to understand and make use of the information instantaneously. With electrum, a Misting could, with practice, pick out the best (or avoid the worst) possible outcomes in your multiple near (and uninformed) future paths, and act accordingly to "make it so". But doing crazy things like Vin grabbing an arrow in mid-flight to jam into Shan Elariel, I think that's only really possible with atium. That's because an electrum burner can "only" see their own near future, so they can do very atium-like things but only relative to what would directly affect them, or which they themselves would directly affect.

It's not clear that an Oracle burning electrum could pull off the same stunt as Vin, as that would require finding one of a huge number of your own possible futures to find the really, really tiny possibilty that you would randomly (without foreknowledge) grab at the air just as the arrow passed through it, AND have the reaction time to realize hey, I can use this arrow as a weapon, and stab with it.

Maybe a Twinborn with Allomantic electrum and Feruchemical zinc (speed of mind) who flared both?  Whoa.

 

You could swe yourself dead on the floor with arrowhole, and another version without, and do what the not dyind version did. For a savant it could theoriticaly be like infinite doover.

Edited January 12, 2017 by Szmit
Default polish keyboard.

[Faceless Mist-Wraith]

On December 22, 2016 at 0:32 PM, robardin said:

It's not clear that an Oracle burning electrum could pull off the same stunt as Vin, as that would require finding one of a huge number of your own possible futures to find the really, really tiny possibilty that you would randomly (without foreknowledge) grab at the air just as the arrow passed through it, AND have the reaction time to realize hey, I can use this arrow as a weapon, and stab with it.

 

It's possible that since you are seeing your own future, you could set the goal of catching an arrow in your mind and look for the shadow that catches something and uses it as a weapon. Alternatively, since you see your future and that creates more futures that you can see, you could look at your future reactions for help. They are essentially choices you can make, so if you see yourself shot with an arrow, you would then see the possible things you might do with that knowledge.

To paraphrase, you look for the future-selves that have seen the future and are reacting, and choose from their reactions.

[Kingsdaughter613]

I'm not certain they do see many images. Have we ever seen electrum burned when someone else was not using Atium? Because I thought the multiple images was a side effect of the opponent using Atium.

[Kurkistan]

1 hour ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

I'm not certain they do see many images. Have we ever seen electrum burned when someone else was not using Atium? Because I thought the multiple images was a side effect of the opponent using Atium.

We have. The very first time we saw anyone burn electrum was Vin during the inquisitor fight at the beginning of HoA. She burned it as a precaution against atium, but there was no indication that the fact that multiple shadows showed up was evidence of atium use; after the fight they even cut open the inquisitor to try and see if he had swallowed any atium, and concluded that he hadn't, just as none inquisitors they'd  faced recently had had any atium either.

That and the "how does electrum" FAQ I quoted up above mentions that you get the multiple shadows by default.

[Kingsdaughter613]

Okay, thanks!

[+robardin]

On 1/13/2017 at 1:17 PM, Faceless Mist-Wraith said:

It's possible that since you are seeing your own future, you could set the goal of catching an arrow in your mind and look for the shadow that catches something and uses it as a weapon. Alternatively, since you see your future and that creates more futures that you can see, you could look at your future reactions for help. They are essentially choices you can make, so if you see yourself shot with an arrow, you would then see the possible things you might do with that knowledge.

To paraphrase, you look for the future-selves that have seen the future and are reacting, and choose from their reactions.

Since the time window is only a few seconds of foresight when burning electrum, if all your possible futures within the next (say) 5 seconds are to be killed, you're checkmated. Like how they got Fortuity, the "High Epic" with a similar ability, in Steelheart.

I think it'd be implausible to suggest a recursive application where "5 seconds from now, I'd have burned electrum to detect something 5 seconds ahead of THAT and done something accordingly", at least in a way that also let you know the outcome (and not just the choice itself). If you could see that 95% of your future selves of T+5 seconds ahead opted to do something based on what they saw T+10 seconds ahead, you should probably do it. You just wouldn't know why it was a good idea until it played out.

Maybe an electrum savant could do this stunt the most effectively - gaining a "sense" of what their best actions would be in a potential life-threatening situation, as voted on by their future electrum-burning selves, with the added element that the future selves who died within 5 seconds wouldn't get a vote at all - but to avoid being ridiculously OP, I'd think even an electrum flare would reach the effective limits of that kind of thing to about 30 seconds into the future?

And in the end, I'd still view electrum viewing as a reactive thing. You could see what potential futures happen to you, and which are most likely versus very implausible, but not choose a specific outcome and search for how to cause it. An outcome as extremely unlikely as plucking an arrow in flight out of the sky probably requires atium to even consider trying to do in the first place.

Now, an electrum savant who was also a Twinborn with F-zinc for speed of mind... That would probably be the ultimate in pushing this kind of thing.
 

 

Edited January 24, 2017 by robardin

[Kingsdaughter613]

Electrum plus f chromium? I think that could have some potential depending on how f chromium actually works.