Compounding Explained!

[LukeWasTaken]

Hello there! I am HoidWasTaken, here to explain compounding to those among you who may not understand it. If a friend is having trouble wrapping their head around it, you can send them here.
In this little guide, I am assuming you know the basics of allomancy and feruchemy, but I will reiterate a couple things about each that are important to the subject.

Feruchemy is one of the metallic arts, and is the neutral art meaning it is of both Preservation and Ruin. It is also the neutral art because it has a net-neutral outcome, which I will explain. Whatever you put into a feruchemical metalmind is exactly what you get out of it. The power is not coming from any mythical source, it is all coming directly from your own body. If I were to be at 1/2 my normal weight for one hour, I could be at 1.5x my weight for one hour.

Allomancy is another of the metallic arts, and it is the end-positive art, being solely of preservation. In allomancy, all the power you are being granted does not come from yourself, but from the shard preservation. That is why it is end-positive is because it is expending that energy over your own. If you burn pewter, the strength you gain does not come from your own body, but from an outside source.

Now that we have that down, I am going to explain compounding.

Compounding is the act of using the power of Allomancy to fuel your Feruchemy, to put it simply.

So, one important thing about Feruchemy before I move on is that without doing some very specific things which I won't cover in this guide, no one but else can use a metalmind that someone sets up. If I store even 1 second of being at half my weight into an iron metalmind, no one else can use that metalmind, because it is locked to my identity.

So, lets assume that I am a full feruchemist and a full allomancer. I have an iron metalmind that I have stored 0.5 my weight into for 3 hours. Now, because I have stored an attribute in this metalmind, it means that it is now identifying as a feruchemical storage for weight. Now, if I were to swallow and burn that bit of iron, it doesn't work like allomantic iron because, like I said, it now identifies as a feruchemical storage for weight. This means that instead of using the power of allomancy to give me the power of iron, it uses the power of allomancy to amplify the weight I stored in there.

Before, you only got as much as you put in for feruchemy. Now, the attribute I stored is being multiplied by the power of allomancy. So instead of having 1.5x my weight for 3 hours, I may have that for 30 hours now. Does that make sense? I sure hope so. Now, I can take a different piece of iron and store all the weight I just created. Now I have an iron metalmind with 0.5 my weight stored in it for 30 hours. If I were to swallow that metalmind and burn it, then I could get 300 hours of 1.5x my weight.

The process can go on forever. I hope this illustrates why being a full feruchemist and a full allomancer is so powerful that the Lord Ruler had breeding programs for the Terrismen to make sure it never happened.

[Koloss17]

This is a really nice guide! Now this doesn’t incorporate resonances, but that is for all twinborn, not just compounders. Will you do reverse compounding at some point?

[LukeWasTaken]

41 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

This is a really nice guide! Now this doesn’t incorporate resonances, but that is for all twinborn, not just compounders. Will you do reverse compounding at some point?

I'll get around to it eventually. Probably soon, I got nothing better to do.

[StormFather!]

What is reverse compounding?

[Weltall]

We don't know how it works but there's some way to use feruchemy to enhance allomancy similar to how normal Compounding uses allomancy to provide a massive boost to feruchemy.

[Koloss17]

10 hours ago, Weltall said:

We don't know how it works but there's some way to use feruchemy to enhance allomancy similar to how normal Compounding uses allomancy to provide a massive boost to feruchemy.

I know how it works...sort of. I know there are things you can reverse compound to a degree-such as storing bronze sense in a tin mind. You could also store fortune from an atiummind, but all that is really doing is giving you extra fortune. Now it can be useful to become a savant. Brando Sando has stated that it’s hard to become a savant in feruchemy because of its end-neutral ways. Now if you somehow break the end-neutralness, like storing stuff from end-positive allomancy, you can become a savant in that way. Not quite the same as using feruchemy to fuel allomancy, but still interesting.

[Guest Somebody from Scadrial]

On 11/5/2020 at 8:37 PM, HoidWasTaken said:

So, lets assume that I am a full feruchemist and a full allomancer. I have an iron metalmind that I have stored 0.5 my weight into for 3 hours. Now, because I have stored an attribute in this metalmind, it means that it is now identifying as a feruchemical storage for weight. Now, if I were to swallow and burn that bit of iron, it doesn't work like allomantic iron because, like I said, it now identifies as a feruchemical storage for weight.

You actually also get the effects of the original metal,this is remarked by Miles that he sees the gold split vision thing.

[Weltall]

1 hour ago, Somebody from Sel said:

You actually also get the effects of the original metal,this is remarked by Miles that he sees the gold split vision thing.

Miles is explicitly burning gold in that scene allomantically rather than burning it for compounding or tapping stored health out of it. He's not getting both effects at once and his dialogue makes it clear that he only goes through the experience of seeing the gold shadows occasionally but we also know he's tapping health constantly and is compounding frequently to keep his reserves up, hence the comment that he always needs more gold. We also have a WoB that's quite clear about this:

Quote

yurisses

If Miles stored a very tiny bit of health into a gold bead and then burned it, what would happen? Would he see goldshadows for a time and then obtain Compounded health when reaching the charged part of the bead? Would the bead be evenly charged and deliver only health, no gold shadows, but at a very low rate since only little health was loaded in it? Would the bead be evenly charged and deliver only health, but at a standard rate the user would always get when compounding?

Brandon Sanderson

He'd hack the system to deliver health for a short time instead of doing what it was supposed to do, but only until the small portion of gold Invested with his Investiture ran out.

Worldbuilders AMA (Dec. 4, 2015)

In other words, you only see the gold shadows when you're specifically burning gold allomantically and it's a piece of metal that isn't holding any feruchemical charge.

Edited November 16, 2020 by Weltall

[LukeWasTaken]

3 hours ago, Weltall said:

Miles is explicitly burning gold in that scene allomantically rather than burning it for compounding or tapping stored health out of it. He's not getting both effects at once and his dialogue makes it clear that he only goes through the experience of seeing the gold shadows occasionally but we also know he's tapping health constantly and is compounding frequently to keep his reserves up, hence the comment that he always needs more gold. We also have a WoB that's quite clear about this:

In other words, you only see the gold shadows when you're specifically burning gold allomantically and it's a piece of metal that isn't holding any feruchemical charge.

thank you for that, my guide still remains relevant!