Question about Compounding

[Channelknight Fadran]

I have a quick question about compounding.

We know from Miles Hundredlives that compounding metals exponentially increases your feruchemical abilities. Does this work in reverse? If I were a copper compounder would I be able to make really, really good copperclouds? What does this mean for steelpushing and ironpulling?

Thanks!

-Channelknight

[Retrac]

 

13 minutes ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

I have a quick question about compounding.

We know from Miles Hundredlives that compounding metals exponentially increases your feruchemical abilities. Does this work in reverse? If I were a copper compounder would I be able to make really, really good copperclouds? What does this mean for steelpushing and ironpulling?

Thanks!

-Channelknight

I belive so. You store up something and then burn it. A good example of this is the Lord Ruler.

[Karger]

19 minutes ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

We know from Miles Hundredlives that compounding metals exponentially increases your feruchemical abilities

Not exactly.  You are turning an end neutral system into an end positive one.  However the abilities were pretty much the same.  Miles was just a savant(check the coppermind for some info on those).

20 minutes ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

Does this work in reverse? If I were a copper compounder would I be able to make really, really good copperclouds? What does this mean for steelpushing and ironpulling?

How would it work in reverse?  The system is already end positive.  You might be able to increase your burn rate and efficiency with savantism or use feruchemical nicrosil(compounding this may give you the effect wanted) but other then that no.

8 minutes ago, Retrac said:

I belive so. You store up something and then burn it. A good example of this is the Lord Ruler.

TLR was supper powerful as an allomancer because of how he got that ability not because of his fullborn status.

[+Harrycrapper]

Yea Karger is correct here, compounding doesn't really affect your allomantic abilities. When you compound, you're using the power of allomancy to fuel your feruchemy. This does not work the other way around, and even if it did, it wouldn't work well. While the effects of feruchemy seem pretty potent, the amount of actual power it uses is pretty minimal compared to allomancy. So, again, even if it were possible(and I'm pretty sure it isn't) using feruchemical reserves to power allomancy would be terribly inefficient. I also assumed while reading the Mistborn books the first time that TLR's compounding is why his allomancy was so much stronger than even Elend after he had a Lerasium bead. But, Brandon later revealed that TLR made himself a super powerful Mistborn, though I forget if that was a side affect of using the power in The Well of Ascension or a deliberate action.

Though, there are useful combinations of feruchemy and allomancy that can make allomantic abilities more effective. An obvious in book example is Wax's ability to store weight makes him very versatile at using steel pushes and this combination would work well for A-Iron as well. The ability to compound steel would also make steel pushes stronger as the increased speed will add additional force to a steel push. Storing nutrition and hydration in Bendalloy and/or storing breath in Cadmium would be very useful for an extended pewter drag, making it so you could run for long periods of time without needing to eat, drink or breath. 

[Pathfinder]

20 minutes ago, Karger said:

How would it work in reverse?  The system is already end positive.  You might be able to increase your burn rate and efficiency with savantism or use feruchemical nicrosil(compounding this may give you the effect wanted) but other then that no.

It has been theorized for awhile, and (I think, I could be wrong) confirmed via WoB that it is possible to power allomancy with feruchemy, like how you can power feruchemy with allomancy. Just we have no idea how that would work. So in the example the OP gave, tapping copper, and creating a copper cloud as result. And since you can tap as much as you want with ferchemy, theoretically you could create much more powerful allomantic effects, whereas before they would only plateau (there is only so far you can flare, or so great a duralumin enhanced burn can take you)

 

edit: found it! knew I wasn't crazy

 

Kaymyth (paraphrased)

I asked him about what the board refers to as "reverse" compounding - i.e., using Feruchemy to enhance Allomancy, rather than the other way around. I wanted to make sure that it was really a thing that exists.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

He said that it was.

Kaymyth (paraphrased)

Is this what the Southern Scadrians have been doing?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It's similar, but not exactly the same.

JordanCon 2016 (April 23, 2016) Edited February 10, 2020 by Pathfinder

[Honorless]

Reverse Compounding? Sweet

Edited February 11, 2020 by Honorless

[Retrac]

 

24 minutes ago, Pathfinder said:

Kaymyth (paraphrased)

I asked him about what the board refers to as "reverse" compounding - i.e., using Feruchemy to enhance Allomancy, rather than the other way around. I wanted to make sure that it was really a thing that exists.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

He said that it was.

Kaymyth (paraphrased)

Is this what the Southern Scadrians have been doing?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It's similar, but not exactly the same.

JordanCon 2016 (April 23, 2016)

He says was though. As in not anymore

[Quantus]

Well, the argument could be made that UnSealed Medallions are themselves an example of Feruchemy "Enhancing" Allomancy.  We know that you can Enhance Allomancy by doubling up on a given power Via Hemalurgy, or with simple Flaring, so I think there's a reasonable possibility you could similarly Double Up with Medallions (or possibly even as a standard ability of a Soulbearer tapping multiple reserves).

But to my mind that would still fall short of Reverse-Compounding.  The whole Hack of Compounding is about finding a Shardic source of Power for abilities that are normally limited by the Persons own natural Investiture; The WOB analogy is that feruchemy is a battery powered gizmo being plugged into the Mains power grid.  Even if the reverse is possible, that would be powering a large appliance with a much weaker Battery Power, and I struggle to see the point of that.    SImilarly, any UnSealed Allomantic could arguably be an example of Allomancy being Fueled by Feruchemy, but it doesnt make you more Powerful in that trait.   

 

 

[Karger]

30 minutes ago, Pathfinder said:

edit: found it! knew I wasn't crazy

Pretty sure he is talking about nicrosil here.

Quote

Feruchemical Use

 

The Feruchemical symbol for nicrosil

A nicrosil Ferring is known as a Soulbearer. Nicrosil is used to store Investiture. This ability is not understood (even by those who utilize it).^[1] A Soulbearer storing Investiture stores their ability to use their Investiture. Therefore, a Soulbearer could store their ability to use Feruchemy and another person tapping it would be turned into a temporary Feruchemist who has the ability to fill a metalmind (assuming the nicrosilmind was unsealed).^[2] Among other things, a nicrosilmind can be used to store the Divine Breath of the Returned and the ability to use various surges of the Knights Radiant.^[3]

Compounding

A nicrosil Compounder would be able to use nicrosil to have a nearly infinite supply of stored Investiture.^[4]

 

[Pathfinder]

8 minutes ago, Retrac said:

 

He says was though. As in not anymore

I believe the wording is due to Brandon being paraphrased and the entire WoB is in the past tense. The person "asked" Brandon, and is retelling what was "said" in past tense. 

5 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Well, the argument could be made that UnSealed Medallions are themselves an example of Feruchemy "Enhancing" Allomancy.  We know that you can Enhance Allomancy by doubling up on a given power Via Hemalurgy, or with simple Flaring, so I think there's a reasonable possibility you could similarly Double Up with Medallions (or possibly even as a standard ability of a Soulbearer tapping multiple reserves).

I think that is where Brandon said it could be similar to what the Southerners are doing

Quote

But to my mind that would still fall short of Reverse-Compounding.  The whole Hack of Compounding is about finding a Shardic source of Power for abilities that are normally limited by the Persons own natural Investiture; The WOB analogy is that feruchemy is a battery powered gizmo being plugged into the Mains power grid.  Even if the reverse is possible, that would be powering a large appliance with a much weaker Battery Power, and I struggle to see the point of that.    SImilarly, any UnSealed Allomantic could arguably be an example of Allomancy being Fueled by Feruchemy, but it doesnt make you more Powerful in that trait.   

Well I would look at it like this, in order to compound in either direction you need access to both sides of the metal right? So you power feruchemy to get huge stores of a trait. Now you use those huge stores of that trait to power your allomancy. So for instance, instead of a steel push that plateaus at a certain level of flare, you can "tap" as whole storage of a "steel push" to levels you could never have been capable of before. 

 

2 minutes ago, Karger said:

Pretty sure he is talking about nicrosil here.

 

Personally I feel the WoB is pretty explicit, but I guess to each their own. I will see if I can find more to be more definitive for everyone. 

Edited February 10, 2020 by Pathfinder

[Quantus]

7 minutes ago, Pathfinder said:

Well I would look at it like this, in order to compound in either direction you need access to both sides of the metal right? So you power feruchemy to get huge stores of a trait. Now you use those huge stores of that trait to power your allomancy. So for instance, instead of a steel push that plateaus at a certain level of flare, you can "tap" as whole storage of a "steel push" to levels you could never have been capable of before. 

I still dont see the point, it would be a tragic waste of Feruchemcial Stores.   Correct me if Im wrong, but given the apparent Exchange Rate between the two Sources as evidenced by normal Compounding, you'd have to store a metric F-ton of whichever feruchemcial trait to match even a little Allomancy, let alone Flairing.    That could be overcome with standard Compounding sure, but then you going a really long way around to power Allomancy with more Allomancy.  

As a Second complication, I dont think we can yet Assume that Soulbearers can Tap their metalminds to get an Increase/multiplier on their Power.  We have WOB that in Medallions at least the Abilities are stored as Whole things like Memories are in Copper.  This heavily implies, but admittedly doesnt confirm, that normal Soulbearers will function similarly.  So it may well not be possible to tap it as a Whole like that in a way that increases the physical effect.  

 

Now, if there were some weird set of circumstances that a compounded like this might be cut off from Preservation such that they can use their own Feruchemy but cannot access their own Allomancy, perhaps it would have some situational survival value, but I dont know of any way to cut somebody off in that way, even an aluminum box wont do it (given that Soulcasting works in one).

[Pathfinder]

17 minutes ago, Quantus said:

I still dont see the point, it would be a tragic waste of Feruchemcial Stores.   Correct me if Im wrong, but given the apparent Exchange Rate between the two Sources as evidenced by normal Compounding, you'd have to store a metric F-ton of whichever feruchemcial trait to match even a little Allomancy, let alone Flairing.    That could be overcome with standard Compounding sure, but then you going a really long way around to power Allomancy with more Allomancy.  

As a Second complication, I dont think we can yet Assume that Soulbearers can Tap their metalminds to get an Increase/multiplier on their Power.  We have WOB that in Medallions at least the Abilities are stored as Whole things like Memories are in Copper.  This heavily implies, but admittedly doesnt confirm, that normal Soulbearers will function similarly.  So it may well not be possible to tap it as a Whole like that in a way that increases the physical effect.  

 

Now, if there were some weird set of circumstances that a compounded like this might be cut off from Preservation such that they can use their own Feruchemy but cannot access their own Allomancy, perhaps it would have some situational survival value, but I dont know of any way to cut somebody off in that way, even an aluminum box wont do it (given that Soulcasting works in one).

So, if the idea doesn't work for you, totally respect that. Only responding because you said you don't understand what I am getting at. So burning an allomantic metal gets you only so much right? Flaring still will only get you so far in power. When you compound where you fuel feruchemy with allomancy, you are getting the power right from the hose as it were, but you still gotta store that excess or it is wasted. So you fill up metal minds in amounts you would never have been able to have before. You can then tap those amounts to get a huge effect up front, or variable effects for variable amounts and variable amounts of time. The idea of reverse compounding, is you can exceed that plateau. So using arbitrary numbers below:

 

Steel Push with normal allomancy: Strength of 10

Steel Push with normal allomancy and duralumin: Strength of 20

Steel Push using feruchemy: Strength however big the amount of storage you have. So could be 30, 40, 50, 100, 200.

 

Powering feruchemy with allomancy is getting rid of the middle man of having to reduce yourself to store an attribute. Reverse compounding from what I understand it, is removing the top limitation of how powerful of an effect you can get out of your allomancy.  So you could tap a "steel push" all at once, and get a steel push far more powerful than you would ever be capable of even with duralumin. 

 

Maybe this illustration will help

Allomancy: Single hose. Valve can only be opened to a set point. You have to drink from the hose

Feruchemy: Set number of bottles of water. You can drink them all now, and have no more water. Or you can sip them over a long time

Feruchemy powered by Allomancy: Single hose. Valve can only be opened to a set point. You can drink from hose or from a set number of bottles of water. You can drink them all now, and just refill them. Or you can sip them over a long time, and still refill them. 

Allomancy powered by Feruchemy: Single hose, Valve can only be opened to a set point. Fill up number of bottles of water. Shoot out all the water in one go, with higher pressure than the original single hose. 

Edited February 10, 2020 by Pathfinder

[Quantus]

35 minutes ago, Pathfinder said:

So, if the idea doesn't work for you, totally respect that. Only responding because you said you don't understand what I am getting at.

Thank You 

35 minutes ago, Pathfinder said:

So burning an allomantic metal gets you only so much right? Flaring still will only get you so far in power. When you compound where you fuel feruchemy with allomancy, you are getting the power right from the hose as it were, but you still gotta store that excess or it is wasted. So you fill up metal minds in amounts you would never have been able to have before. You can then tap those amounts to get a huge effect up front, or variable effects for variable amounts and variable amounts of time. The idea of reverse compounding, is you can exceed that plateau. So using arbitrary numbers below:

 

Steel Push with normal allomancy: Strength of 10

Steel Push with normal allomancy and duralumin: Strength of 20

Steel Push using feruchemy: Strength however big the amount of storage you have. So could be 30, 40, 50, 100, 200.

 

Hmm, ok I think I see where you are going with this now.  The issue Im seeing is that you are describing Duralumin more like how I would describe Flaring, whereas Dularumin would be more along the lines of the Instant-flush that you describe as coming from the Metalminds.  I would agree that Flaring would be akin to the simple x2 multiplier that you show, but Duralumin is a lot closer to instant Burst burn already, is it not?

[Pathfinder]

4 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Thank You 

Hmm, ok I think I see where you are going with this now.  The issue Im seeing is that you are describing Duralumin more like how I would describe Flaring, whereas Dularumin would be more along the lines of the Instant-flush that you describe as coming from the Metalminds.  I would agree that Flaring would be akin to the simple x2 multiplier that you show, but Duralumin is a lot closer to instant Burst burn already, is it not?

Duralumin burns the metal all at once in a sudden burst, but although very fast, it still takes time, and it is still limited to how much metal you have as well as how powerful of an allomancer you are. I will need time to pull up the corresponding WoBs for those. Theoretically so long as you have the stores, you can increase the effect. So even duralumin is limited in comparison. 

[Quantus]

2 minutes ago, Pathfinder said:

Duralumin burns the metal all at once in a sudden burst, but although very fast, it still takes time, and it is still limited to how much metal you have as well as how powerful of an allomancer you are. I will need time to pull up the corresponding WoBs for those. Theoretically so long as you have the stores, you can increase the effect. So even duralumin is limited in comparison. 

Feruchemy also has hard limits, for what it's worth, which I tend to assume (based on nothing) would be more or less in line with Duralumin which Ive always considered just slamming you up against that hard limit. 

 

 

Quote

 

This post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rulesyeahdiomedes

What limits are there on how fast someone with steel Feruchemy can go? Like is it more based on the limits of what the body can survive?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I will dig into that eventually because I actually have to run the math and just decide. It’s certainly, *pause* there are hard, very hard limits, let’s just say that. But the body generally is...I fudge Feruchemy a little bit, where I allow the body to adapt to what it’s doing for most Feruchemy. Otherwise I just couldn’t use it for very much.

Calamity Philadelphia signing (Feb. 20, 2016)

 

 

[Pathfinder]

2 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Feruchemy also has hard limits, for what it's worth, which I tend to assume (based on nothing) would be more or less in line with Duralumin which Ive always considered just slamming you up against that hard limit. 

 

 

 

The hard limits indicated here are referring to the body surviving the experience. So for steel there is friction. For pewter, you can tap so much muscle that you can't move. But there isn't a functional limit on how much you can tap. Store? Totally. But not tap. Still looking for the WoB I mentioned, but I found this interesting one in the meantime:

 

Chaos (paraphrased)

I continued to ask about the Lord Ruler and his Allomantic strength.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

There's an upper bound to the amount of power you can get from being a savant. Brandon said that, obviously, the Lord Ruler wasn't using duralumin and Elend could only get that powerful in Soothing using duralumin. He implied that there was a way to Compound to enhance Allomancy.

Alloy of Law 17th Shard Q&A (Nov. 5, 2011)

[Channelknight Fadran]

I leave for three hours and my post's gone viral... XD

[Raphaborn]

I particularly find it very interesting. Of course it would be more useful if you had both types of Compounding (being N-end, Feruchemy would be very inefficient for Allomancy alone), but if you can use the normal Compounding to store the excess and then convert to Allomancy it would be incredible .
One advantage I can think of is that probably Chromium and Nicrosil would probably not affect Allomancy when being fueled by Metalminds.
Even if Double Compouding is not available, it should at least allow continuous use with less chance of being taken to Savantism. In addition to making it much easier to use of dangerous (or poison) metals, it does not need to be consumed and replaced. This is very useful for expensive or lost metals (like atium and malatium). Obviously this assumptions were based on interpretation of mechanics not be necessary for the metal to be burned at any point to make it work.
In the case of the Double Compounding interpretation, the great advantage is that you do not need to carry metal flasks (only Allomantic metalminds) and be able to store them all in advance. And I also have a theory that this is necessary to detect Feruchemy with A-Bronze.

Edited February 11, 2020 by Raphaborn

[Halyo_Alex]

8 hours ago, Pathfinder said:

So, if the idea doesn't work for you, totally respect that. Only responding because you said you don't understand what I am getting at. So burning an allomantic metal gets you only so much right? Flaring still will only get you so far in power. When you compound where you fuel feruchemy with allomancy, you are getting the power right from the hose as it were, but you still gotta store that excess or it is wasted. So you fill up metal minds in amounts you would never have been able to have before. You can then tap those amounts to get a huge effect up front, or variable effects for variable amounts and variable amounts of time. The idea of reverse compounding, is you can exceed that plateau. So using arbitrary numbers below:

 

Steel Push with normal allomancy: Strength of 10

Steel Push with normal allomancy and duralumin: Strength of 20

Steel Push using feruchemy: Strength however big the amount of storage you have. So could be 30, 40, 50, 100, 200.

 

Powering feruchemy with allomancy is getting rid of the middle man of having to reduce yourself to store an attribute. Reverse compounding from what I understand it, is removing the top limitation of how powerful of an effect you can get out of your allomancy.  So you could tap a "steel push" all at once, and get a steel push far more powerful than you would ever be capable of even with duralumin. 

 

Maybe this illustration will help

Allomancy: Single hose. Valve can only be opened to a set point. You have to drink from the hose

Feruchemy: Set number of bottles of water. You can drink them all now, and have no more water. Or you can sip them over a long time

Feruchemy powered by Allomancy: Single hose. Valve can only be opened to a set point. You can drink from hose or from a set number of bottles of water. You can drink them all now, and just refill them. Or you can sip them over a long time, and still refill them. 

Allomancy powered by Feruchemy: Single hose, Valve can only be opened to a set point. Fill up number of bottles of water. Shoot out all the water in one go, with higher pressure than the original single hose. 

Finally, someone's figured out how to put this theory into words where I was unable. I knew that reverse compounding would do something like this, but I couldn't find the words to explain it in a way that would make any sense to anyone else...

The question is can you burn a metal allomantically with no feruchemical charge and then use the incoming power to charge your metalminds instead of the normal feruchemical attribute? I can see why Miles would never do that, bolstering A-Gold is possibly the most useless metal to do it to other than A-Aluminum.

But it would make sense that you could store Steel in Steel, if you get what i mean. Power coming in via the key of Steel's molecular structure could be stored into Steel's molecular structure if the person had the allomancy and feruchemy with the same Identity (which implies that Medallions are going to be a lot cooler than even I had thought).

And then what if you re-compound that steelpush-filled steelmind? could you sort of... recursively compound your allomantic power? i imagine you could then store that higher level of power in yet more steel, but actually applying the steelpush as you're burning it would be like a multiplier of power on your allomantic output, yes?

Hm... This requires feedback for further theorizing.

[Dancer]

In BoM we see what I would say is reverse compounding. The Bands of Morning. When Wax and Marasi use the Bands of Morning they get a huge boost in the Allomantic power they can use by both burning metals and tapping the Investiture in the Bands. The power is so great that Wax can pull a flying machine out of the sky that is trying to fly away.   

[Tglassy]

I always figured tapping either Investiture would allow one to have a stronger connection to Preservation, and thus increase one's Allomancy.  Store up your investiture to weaken your Allomancy, then tap it later for a boost.