Compounding's Exact Mechanics and Limitations

[Trusk'our]

There seems to have been a lot of confusion and conflicting ideas on how Compounding works on other threads as of late.

This is how I understand it.

1. When you Compound, you need to put a Feruchemical charge into a Metalmind.

2. You burn the Metalmind, but (can) choose to draw Feruchemical power instead of Allomantic power (Vin gets the Allomantic power of one of Sazed's Pewterminds rather than the Feruchemical power in TFE).

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Worldbuilders AMA (Dec. 3, 2015)

djscrub

Since burning Feruchemically charged metal seems to require a choice between getting the Allomantic or Feruchemical property (e.g., Miles only sees gold ghosts when he wants to, not as a side effect of compounded healing), is there any special advantage to compounding pewter and tin, where the Allomantic and Feruchemical use is the same? Is their compounding even stronger than normal compounding because you can tap both power sources simultaneously, or maybe because Preservation is particularly attuned to providing those powers through those metals?

Brandon Sanderson

Remember that compounding is a "hack" of the magic. You're looking to fool the magics, and use one to power the other. The value in it is that you can use Allomantic power to fuel Feruchemy. It's like hooking a power cord up to a device that, up to that point, you'd powered by using a hand crank.

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Open The Fridge Interview (Nov. 16, 2011)

Luther

Ok, last question. It was really difficult coming up with three questions that haven’t been asked already...

Brandon Sanderson

OK... you’re not going to ask me the “what would you ask me” question?

Lyndsey Luther

Not quite...

Brandon Sanderson

OK good, because I hate that one! (laughs)

Lyndsey Luther

My question is if there’s anything that you’ve never been asked that you would like to talk about?

Brandon Sanderson

Oooooh, ok. Hm. That one is so hard! Every time people ask me something like this... What have I never been asked that people should be asking, is basically what the question is? Something that the fans have just missed... They pick up on so much, that it’s hard... I do wonder if, you know… all the magic systems [in my books] are connected and work on some basic fundamental principles, and a lot of people haven’t been asking questions about this. One thing I did get a question on today, and I’ll just talk about this one... they didn’t ask the right question, but I nudged them the right way, is understanding that tie between AonDor [the magic system from Elantris] and Allomancy [Mistborn’s magic system].

People ask about getting the power from metals and things, but that’s not actually how it works. The power’s not coming from metal. I talked a little about this before, but you are drawing power from some source, and the metal is actually just a gateway. It’s actually the molecular structure of the metal… what’s going on there, the pattern, the resonance of that metal works in the same way as an Aon does in Elantris. It filters the power. So it is just a sign of “this is what power this energy is going to be shaped into and give you.” When you understand that, Compounding [in Alloy of Law] makes much more sense.

Compounding is where you are able to kind of draw in more power than you should with Feruchemy. What’s going on there is you’re actually charging a piece of metal, and then you are burning that metal as a Feruchemical charge. What is happening is that the Feruchemical charge overwrites the Allomantic charge, and so you actually fuel Feruchemy with Allomancy, is what you are doing. Then if you just get out another piece of metal and store it in, since you’re not drawing the power from yourself, you’re cheating the system, you’re short-circuiting the system a little bit. So you can actually use the power that usually fuels Allomancy, to fuel Feruchemy, which you can then store in a metalmind, and basically build up these huge reservoirs of it. So what’s going on there is… imagine there’s like, an imprint, a wavelength, so to speak. A beat for an Allomantic thing, that when you burn a metal, it says “ok, this is what power we give.” When it’s got that charge, it changes that beat and says, “now we get this power.” And you access a set of Feruchemical power. That’s why Compounding is so powerful.

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Worldbuilders AMA (Dec. 3, 2015)

Moogle

Compounding requires practice, according to The Hero of Age's annotations. And yet, it's apparently as easy as burning a metalmind. What was going on that meant the Inquisitors couldn't figure out how to do it (despite Ruin likely knowing how and undoubtedly wanting them to learn) for over a year? What skill did they need to practice doing, exactly?

And what happened while they were practicing burning metalminds without successfully Compounding? Did they get an Allomantic effect?

Brandon Sanderson

What I think I was getting at in the annotations was a cosmere magic rule that, perhaps, I hadn't completely refined yet. This is the idea that INTENTION is vitally important to the workings of most cosmere magics.

You can learn to burn metals instinctively over time, but it does take time--time for your body to figure out what it's doing. If you have instruction and guidance, you can pick it up in an evening, like Vin did. Same goes for most of the magics. This ties into Awakening, with the idea that you have to form a command.

During Warbreaker was where I really refined this aspect of the magic. Logically, since the beginning of the cosmere, I've wanted all three Realms to be important to the way the magics worked. The "Practice" therefore for compounding is mental practice--a barrier to overcome in understanding what is happening, and what it will do to you.

If you already know all of these things by having it explained to you, that barrier is far less high. I think that was what I was talking about in the Annotations, without really having the idea specified yet--though I'd have to look back at the annotation and re-read it to say for certain.

3. You only get Feruchemical power by burning the Invested parts of your Metalmind; a partially full Metalmind will only yield a Feruchemical charge as long as the Feruchemically Invested part remains (though you can siphon off some of the new Feruchemical charge gained by Compounding and put it back into the burning metal, meaning that you can start with a relatively small Feruchemical charge powered by your own self, then Compound ever after using only Preservation's power and burned metal).

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Worldbuilders AMA (Dec. 4, 2015)

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.

4. The amount of Feruchemical power you get from burning your Metalmind is determined by how powerful an Allomancer you are, since the more powerful your Allomancy the more Investiture you draw from Preservation per unit of metal burned; the Feruchemical attribute isn't actually multiplied as Sazed thinks in TFE, it's just used to hack an Allomantic power stream (whether you can keep the original Feruchemical charge and recycle it or whether it is lost and completely replaced by Preservation's power isn't yet known as I understand it).

5. Also, if you compound using Hemalurgic spikes, you do in fact draw from Ruin's Investiture instead of Preservation's. I had wondered about this for a while, personally.

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Emerald City Comic Con 2018 (March 1, 2018)

Zantis

Let's say Lift received two Hemalurgic spikes: one for Allomantic bendalloy and one for Feruchemical bendalloy. Then she eats a bunch of pancakes, stores the nutrition in a piece of bendalloy, burns it to compound nutrition. Can that nutrition be turned into Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.  Yeah, but remember she didn't have to be-- so basically what that-- Is just a really complicated way for her to turn Allomantic Investiture-- so that it can allocate Allomantic Investiture into Stormlight. That would be a complex method of doing that. Just transferring one type of Investiture into another. It's just basically drawing from Ruin and she is then turning it into Stormlight-ish? It's a complicated thing, but that's basically what happens, just really crazy.

Zantis

Okay, so-- but it is the same sort of thing, right? *hesitant nod from Brandon* And--

Brandon Sanderson

I hope that eventually in the cosmere they will find easier ways than that.

6. Allomantic duralumin can be used to speed up the process of Compounding.

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Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing (Dec. 1, 2016)

Questioner

What happens if you burn duralumin while Compounding?

Brandon Sanderson

Duralumin while Compounding. So, what duralumin does is it burns out of all of your metal in one burst. So it doesn't necessarily gain you power, it makes it all happen at the same time. The same thing would happen.

Questioner

Could you turn into a baby?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, you could totally turn into a baby. That is within the power of using that, doing <health wrong>, yeah you could totally... You'd be really dangerous.

Questioner

But it wouldn't really do much?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh it would have explosive... it does things really fast. That's what it does. Yes you could achieve very powerful sudden effects through that. It'd be scary. Controlling it can be dangerous, regardless of which metal you use.

 

 

7. While Compounding is very powerful if done correctly, practitioners are still limited by Feruchemical storage size, the amount of metal they can get to metabolize, the raw Allomantic power of the practitioner (for efficiency at gathering more Feruchemical charge), and the inherent limitations of Feruchemical compression (the more power you tap at once, the less efficient it becomes, and some attributes like steel and pewter have more practical upper limits as to their usefulness).

 

Hopefully this post is actually useful to some, and not just only spitting facts that are common knowledge.

Edited March 7, 2023 by Trusk'our

[Mistchemist16]

This is a really great list! There are only two changes I would want to make

1. Clarify that while you  could probably use Intention to get Allomantic effects from burning metalminds, Vin burning Sazed’s pewter is not a case of that. She literally couldn’t use that power because she wasn’t a Feruchemist

2. Without duralumin, a Compounder can’t instantly burn away their entire metal like they could tap a metalmind. They would be limited by Allomantic burn rates and perhaps even burn the metal slower than usual since there’s more Investiture.

Edit: Just to clarify, I thought that metalminds burned slower because they were harder for leachers to break in. But it seems like they may be different mechanics. Thank you for your insight

Edited March 8, 2023 by Mistchemist16

[Trusk'our]

5 minutes ago, Mistchemist16 said:

This is a really great list! 

Thank you! Glad to see my post was good after all.

5 minutes ago, Mistchemist16 said:

1. Clarify that while you  could probably use Intention to get Allomantic effects from burning metalminds, Vin burning Sazed’s pewter is not a case of that. She literally couldn’t use that power because she wasn’t a Feruchemist

Fair enough. I probably should have stuck solely with the Inquisitors learning to Compound quote.

6 minutes ago, Mistchemist16 said:

2. Without duralumin, a Compounder can’t instantly burn away their entire metal like they could tap a metalmind. They would be limited by Allomantic burn rates and perhaps even burn the metal slower than usual since there’s more Investiture.

Apologies. I thought that it was clear, but I suppose I could have done better about explaining the Allomantic burn rate.

I don't think that the Compounder's Invested metals would necessarily burn slower though. An enemy Leecher would certainly have a harder time taking it away though, since it's actually Invested (as opposed to most other metals).

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ConQuest 46 (May 22, 2015)

Kaymyth

I asked the question about chromium vs a Compounder with both Invested and un-Invested metals in both their stomach and piercings.

Brandon Sanderson

What it boils down to is this:

1) Yes, the piercings will get burned off.

2) The non-Invested metals go before the Invested ones. He said that because Invested metals are harder to affect, it takes a little extra time and effort to get them to burn off. So a Leecher trying to clean out a Compounder would have to get a good grip and hang on for a few seconds.

3) Chromium burns about as quickly as duralumin, so if you're trying to burn off a lot of metals, it is possible to run out of chromium before your target is clean. This would probably only be an issue when dealing with larger pieces (like jewelry) rather than your standard metal-flakes-in-the-stomach deal.

 

[therunner]

18 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Apologies. I thought that it was clear, but I suppose I could have done better about explaining the Allomantic burn rate.

I don't think that the Compounder's Invested metals would necessarily burn slower though. An enemy Leecher would certainly have a harder time taking it away though, since it's actually Invested (as opposed to most other metals).

I think it might burn faster possibly?

The burn rate is proportionally to 'power expenditure' of the effect, so more powerful metals burn faster.
However, the issue is how this interacts with the Feruchemical charge (i.e. possibly the burning consumes primarily the feruchemical charg, and not the metal).

And thanks for doing this, it is a nice reference point

Edited March 7, 2023 by therunner

[Trusk'our]

11 minutes ago, therunner said:

I think it might burn faster possibly?

The burn rate is proportionally to 'power expenditure' of the effect, so more powerful metals burn faster.
However, the issue is how this interacts with the Feruchemical charge (i.e. possibly the burning consumes primarily the feruchemical charg, and not the metal).

Hmmm. Good thought.

Allomantic metals burn at different rates, presumably because the different powers require different amounts of Investiture to function, so different Feruchemical attributes would likely require different speeds of burning too.

We don't normally notice Feruchemical Investiture differences though, since you would store faster as well as tap faster, but if you Compound it may become more relevant.

15 minutes ago, therunner said:

And thanks for doing this, it is a nice reference point

You're quite welcome.

[therunner]

1 minute ago, Trusk'our said:

Allomantic metals burn at different rates, presumably because the different powers require different amounts of Investiture to function, so different Feruchemical attributes would likely require different speeds of burning too.

Yep exactly.
So if allomancy is hacked to power Feruchemy, then the burn rate would have to adjust to adjust for the new power requirement.

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We don't normally notice Feruchemical Investiture differences though, since you would store faster as well as tap faster, but if you Compound it may become more relevant.

I don't think for storing and tapping the same argument applies though.
You are always storing some percentage amount of what full attribute is (e.g. 50% of weight, 10% speed, etc.), so storing or tapping faster does not make sense? At least I don't see it.

[Trusk'our]

51 minutes ago, therunner said:

I don't think for storing and tapping the same argument applies though.
You are always storing some percentage amount of what full attribute is (e.g. 50% of weight, 10% speed, etc.), so storing or tapping faster does not make sense? At least I don't see it.

I mean that if you store, say, 20% of your weight in a Metalmind, it doesn't necessarily equal 20% physical speed or 20% health in terms of raw Investiture. 

But since it's a percentage of your own attributes, you wouldn't normally care as a Feruchemist: one hour of doubled weight is comparable to one hour of physical speed or health in terms of how fast it goes, not in terms of actual Invested-ness.

[therunner]

37 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I mean that if you store, say, 20% of your weight in a Metalmind, it doesn't necessarily equal 20% physical speed or 20% health in terms of raw Investiture. 

But since it's a percentage of your own attributes, you wouldn't normally care as a Feruchemist: one hour of doubled weight is comparable to one hour of physical speed or health in terms of how fast it goes, not in terms of actual Invested-ness.

Ah, that makes sense.
Thank you for clarification.

[Trusk'our]

13 minutes ago, therunner said:

Ah, that makes sense.
Thank you for clarification.

Anytime 

(unless I'm currently sleeping or doing school)

[alder24]

I'm here to learn! Thank you, this is great. I'm still sometimes confused about compounding. Spike's compounding fueled by Ruin is a novelty for me. 

 

2 hours ago, Mistchemist16 said:

2. Without duralumin, a Compounder can’t instantly burn away their entire metal like they could tap a metalmind. They would be limited by Allomantic burn rates and perhaps even burn the metal slower than usual since there’s more Investiture.

I think it would be the opposite. Atium is a clear example, as it burns the fastest from all metals. And using WoB found by @therunner, it's also about work done by metals:

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

The longest lasting of the Allomantic metals is actually copper, which is used by Smokers to hide Allomancy. Tin is second, however. Steel and Iron are actually rather quick, but since they're generally used in bursts, it's hard to notice. Both brass and zinc are medium, as is bronze. Pewter burns the fastest of the basic eight, though atium and gold both burn faster than it does.

In my mind, it's related to how much 'work' the metal has to do. That's why pewter, steel, and iron burn so quickly. A lot of weight and power is getting thrown around, while copper only has to do something simple. However, I never really set any of these things hard-fast.

And, only atium is really all that rare. Because of the value of the metals, the noble houses expended a lot of resources finding and exploiting mines to produce the metals. This resulted in a slightly higher value for most of them as opposed to our world, but not really noticeably so, because Allomancers really don't need that much metal. Even fast burning metals, like pewter, are generally only swallowed in very small amounts. (i.e. A small bit goes a long way.)

TWG Posts (July 31, 2006)

 

[Trusk'our]

3 minutes ago, alder24 said:

I think it would be the opposite. Atium is a clear example, as it burns the fastest from all metals. And using WoB found by @therunner, it's also about work done by metals:

  Hide contents

Brandon Sanderson

The longest lasting of the Allomantic metals is actually copper, which is used by Smokers to hide Allomancy. Tin is second, however. Steel and Iron are actually rather quick, but since they're generally used in bursts, it's hard to notice. Both brass and zinc are medium, as is bronze. Pewter burns the fastest of the basic eight, though atium and gold both burn faster than it does.

In my mind, it's related to how much 'work' the metal has to do. That's why pewter, steel, and iron burn so quickly. A lot of weight and power is getting thrown around, while copper only has to do something simple. However, I never really set any of these things hard-fast.

And, only atium is really all that rare. Because of the value of the metals, the noble houses expended a lot of resources finding and exploiting mines to produce the metals. This resulted in a slightly higher value for most of them as opposed to our world, but not really noticeably so, because Allomancers really don't need that much metal. Even fast burning metals, like pewter, are generally only swallowed in very small amounts. (i.e. A small bit goes a long way.)

TWG Posts (July 31, 2006)

 

Exactly. Since the Feruchemical charges likely use different amounts of Investiture to fuel, they likely burn at different rates.

 

4 minutes ago, alder24 said:

I'm here to learn! Thank you, this is great. I'm still sometimes confused about compounding. Spike's compounding fueled by Ruin is a novelty for me. 

Me too! I was lucky enough to barely catch that part in the quote I was using. But it's confirmed now that Hemalurgic spikes do use Ruin's Investiture rather than just hotwiring your Spiritweb to draw from Preservation or any other Shard in question.

[Tglassy]

The limitations regarding storage space is kinda moot, considering we've never seen a Metalmind in the books that has been full.  Miles can store enough health in his dozens of gold pins so he never has to stop tapping health.  Wax stores up years and years of weight in his Iron Bracers, so much so that he can make himself heavier than a building for a few moments, and he never once talks about "Oh, I filled that bracer, I guess I need another."

And don't forget the Medallions.  The Southern Scadrians store as much of their weight as possible for weeks or months at a time while flying, and never have to empty out their single iron coin.  In fact, they never even mention "Oh, these metalminds are really full".  

So yeah, if anyone will be able to completely fill a metalmind, it would be a Compounder, but the amount of attribute that can be stored in a single bracer is likely more than we have seen used in the entirey of the series.  It is enough to, effectively, grant the Compounder a large enough supply of that attribute that they have no fear of running out no matter how much they draw from it for the forseeable future.  Example A:  Wayne spent weeks storing up enough health to heal from three bullets.  Miles eats bullets.  And grenades.  That blow up in his hand.  

[StanLemon]

On 3/7/2023 at 0:37 PM, Trusk'our said:

3. You only get Feruchemical power by burning the Invested parts of your Metalmind; a partially full Metalmind will only yield a Feruchemical charge as long as the Feruchemically Invested part remains (though you can siphon off some of the new Feruchemical charge gained by Compounding and put it back into the burning metal, meaning that you can start with a relatively small Feruchemical charge powered by your own self, then Compound ever after using only Preservation's power and burned metal).

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Also, most Feruchemical traits diffuse like a gas in the metal, so it likely doesn't take much of a trait to Invest all the metal meaning it takes very little of a trait to Invest into a Metalmind for Compounding purposes. The only real question is if the amount of Investiture in a metal influences how much you get out by Compounding or the speed at which the metal burns.

[therunner]

8 hours ago, Tglassy said:

The limitations regarding storage space is kinda moot, considering we've never seen a Metalmind in the books that has been full.  Miles can store enough health in his dozens of gold pins so he never has to stop tapping health.  Wax stores up years and years of weight in his Iron Bracers, so much so that he can make himself heavier than a building for a few moments, and he never once talks about "Oh, I filled that bracer, I guess I need another."

And don't forget the Medallions.  The Southern Scadrians store as much of their weight as possible for weeks or months at a time while flying, and never have to empty out their single iron coin.  In fact, they never even mention "Oh, these metalminds are really full".  

So yeah, if anyone will be able to completely fill a metalmind, it would be a Compounder, but the amount of attribute that can be stored in a single bracer is likely more than we have seen used in the entirey of the series.  It is enough to, effectively, grant the Compounder a large enough supply of that attribute that they have no fear of running out no matter how much they draw from it for the forseeable future. 

Bands of Mourning were described as basically full, so we do have one example, and they did nearly run out of the F-steel after few seconds of sonic speeds.
So it is concern even for Fullborn.

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Example A:  Wayne spent weeks storing up enough health to heal from three bullets.  Miles eats bullets.  And grenades.  That blow up in his hand.  

We discussed this one in depth in Fullborn vs thread, Wayne needed 2 weeks to heal 3 bullets. If Miles only compounded two weeks, he would have 20 weeks and could then easily heal 30 bullets, and if he compounded twice he could eat 300 bullets. Basically, what Miles shows is relatively in line with Compounder, but not suggestive of unlimited amounts.

After all, we do see him Compound in spare time, and he needs to keep up with robberies to keep himself supplied with Gold for Compounding, so clearly he needs to continue to do so to not run out.

3 hours ago, StanLemon said:

Also, most Feruchemical traits diffuse like a gas in the metal, so it likely doesn't take much of a trait to Invest all the metal meaning it takes very little of a trait to Invest into a Metalmind for Compounding purposes. The only real question is if the amount of Investiture in a metal influences how much you get out by Compounding or the speed at which the metal burns.

The problem is that is seems that once you start burning, the diffusion kind of does not matter?
In the sense that if you invest Metalmind only a little, it will act like F-metal for only a short time when burning.

So I think it influences neither the speed nor the amount you get (outside of the fact that you get shorted time for Compounding).

[StanLemon]

4 hours ago, therunner said:

Bands of Mourning were described as basically full, so we do have one example, and they did nearly run out of the F-steel after few seconds of sonic speeds.
So it is concern even for Fullborn.

There is a caveat to this though. The Bands are a fairly small metalmind overall, described as only slightly bigger than a hand. But they are made of at minimum 16 other pieces of metal which would make each individual metalmind relatively small. Also, it's hard to judge how full each trait in the Bands actually were, only that there was enough Investiture throughout the entire Bands for for Wax to see it with his Allomancy.

[therunner]

29 minutes ago, StanLemon said:

There is a caveat to this though. The Bands are a fairly small metalmind overall, described as only slightly bigger than a hand. But they are made of at minimum 16 other pieces of metal which would make each individual metalmind relatively small. Also, it's hard to judge how full each trait in the Bands actually were, only that there was enough Investiture throughout the entire Bands for for Wax to see it with his Allomancy.

Bands are actually fairly large as far as metalminds go. Most are things like rings, earring, small bracers etc., whereas BoM are repeatedly described as overzised spearhead (Marasi specifically clutches them in two hands). Normal spearheads are ~20 cm long and ~5 wide, larger than most metalminds.

And they were described by Wax as the fullest metalminds he has ever seen, even when he is filling his pretty much non-stop. If BoM were not exactly full, they were nearly so.

[Trusk'our]

On 3/8/2023 at 7:11 PM, Tglassy said:

The limitations regarding storage space is kinda moot, considering we've never seen a Metalmind in the books that has been full.  Miles can store enough health in his dozens of gold pins so he never has to stop tapping health.  Wax stores up years and years of weight in his Iron Bracers, so much so that he can make himself heavier than a building for a few moments, and he never once talks about "Oh, I filled that bracer, I guess I need another."

And don't forget the Medallions.  The Southern Scadrians store as much of their weight as possible for weeks or months at a time while flying, and never have to empty out their single iron coin.  In fact, they never even mention "Oh, these metalminds are really full".  

So yeah, if anyone will be able to completely fill a metalmind, it would be a Compounder, but the amount of attribute that can be stored in a single bracer is likely more than we have seen used in the entirey of the series.  It is enough to, effectively, grant the Compounder a large enough supply of that attribute that they have no fear of running out no matter how much they draw from it for the forseeable future.  Example A:  Wayne spent weeks storing up enough health to heal from three bullets.  Miles eats bullets.  And grenades.  That blow up in his hand.  

True, most Feruchemists and even Compounders aren't really going to have an issue with limited storage space.

I mostly meant that there are some limitations to tapping Feruchemical attributes, even if you could theoretically tap them as fast as you wanted (i.e., you won't see a steel Compounder going at Mach twelve, or even going at Mach one for very long, regardless of their unique powers or even with duralumin added to the mix; there are just some physical limitations to the magic).

Edited March 28, 2023 by Trusk'our

[StanLemon]

3 hours ago, therunner said:

Bands are actually fairly large as far as metalminds go. Most are things like rings, earring, small bracers etc., whereas BoM are repeatedly described as overzised spearhead (Marasi specifically clutches them in two hands). Normal spearheads are ~20 cm long and ~5 wide, larger than most metalminds.

And they were described by Wax as the fullest metalminds he has ever seen, even when he is filling his pretty much non-stop. If BoM were not exactly full, they were nearly so.

Except it's also described as being only a little larger than a hand, so if it's over sized it isn't by much. Also you missed the point, that spearhead is made up of at least 16 other pieces of metal, so each metalmind is at best only 1/16th the size of the Bands. A small bracer would be more metal than that. And that's if there wasn't multiple metalminds for Tin, Bendalloy, or Nicrosil making each metalmind even smaller. Heck, assuming 5 layers for Tin and 2 for Bendalloy would would bring each metalmind to 1/21 of the Bands' total size. Likely no larger than a standard bracelet at most. And that's assuming all Nicrosil functions can be done with a single Nicrosilmind 

Edit: I realize bracelet might be ambiguous, I am specifically meaning a solid metal bracelet, not a small chained bracelet 

Edited March 9, 2023 by StanLemon

[Mistchemist16]

1 hour ago, StanLemon said:

Heck, assuming 5 layers for Tin and 2 for Bendalloy would would bring each metalmind to 1/21 of the Bands' total size. Likely no larger than a standard bracelet at most. And that's assuming all Nicrosil functions can be done with a single Nicrosilmind 

It’s also worth noting that unsealed metalminds, which use nicrosil principles, can only store 3 powers max. I’ve had my own theories about how the medallions work, but if we assume that a nicrosil mind is similarly limited to three abilites, that could mean 10-11 nicrosil minds. So that would make each individual metalmind 1/31 or 1/32 of the overall Bands. But we do know medallions are more restrictive, so maybe that means they store less powers

 

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)

It’s also worth noting that it is possible that some metals are more represented than others. At the very least, it would be kinda weird to spend space to make an equal number or aluminumminds. Like how game devs don’t code texture below the tiles you walk on. Aluminum just isn’t that useful.

My theories on the medallions:

 

Edited March 9, 2023 by Mistchemist16
mentioned restrictive medallions

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

On 3/7/2023 at 0:37 PM, Trusk'our said:

There seems to have been a lot of confusion and conflicting ideas on how Compounding works on other threads as of late.

This is how I understand it.

1. When you Compound, you need to put a Feruchemical charge into a Metalmind.

2. You burn the Metalmind, but (can) choose to draw Feruchemical power instead of Allomantic power (Vin gets the Allomantic power of one of Sazed's Pewterminds rather than the Feruchemical power in TFE).

3. You only get Feruchemical power by burning the Invested parts of your Metalmind; a partially full Metalmind will only yield a Feruchemical charge as long as the Feruchemically Invested part remains (though you can siphon off some of the new Feruchemical charge gained by Compounding and put it back into the burning metal, meaning that you can start with a relatively small Feruchemical charge powered by your own self, then Compound ever after using only Preservation's power and burned metal).

4. The amount of Feruchemical power you get from burning your Metalmind is determined by how powerful an Allomancer you are, since the more powerful your Allomancy the more Investiture you draw from Preservation per unit of metal burned; the Feruchemical attribute isn't actually multiplied as Sazed thinks in TFE, it's just used to hack an Allomantic power stream (whether you can keep the original Feruchemical charge and recycle it or whether it is lost and completely replaced by Preservation's power isn't yet known as I understand it).

5. Also, if you compound using Hemalurgic spikes, you do in fact draw from Ruin's Investiture instead of Preservation's. I had wondered about this for a while, personally.

6. Allomantic duralumin can be used to speed up the process of Compounding.

7. While Compounding is very powerful if done correctly, practitioners are still limited by Feruchemical storage size, the amount of metal they can get to metabolize, the raw Allomantic power of the practitioner (for efficiency at gathering more Feruchemical charge), and the inherent limitations of Feruchemical compression (the more power you tap at once, the less efficient it becomes, and some attributes like steel and pewter have more practical upper limits as to their usefulness).

 

Hopefully this post is actually useful to some, and not just only spitting facts that are common knowledge.

I like a lot of this.  My question is just this... is there a breakpoint where you actually lose attribute per time burning the metalmind making it net negative?   Or can you just stuff a metalmind so full of attribute that it burns at such a small rate as to keep itself net positive?  

 

If I have a gram of steel stuffed with millions of seconds worth of speed and I burnt that how slow would it have to burn to get to a reasonable power level while not losing attribute?  

The danger of 10x argument is that it can quickly get out of hand but it always stays net positive which is the whole point.  

Trying to limit the metalmind and saying you get x from it based on allomantic strength opens a lot of doors to which you could end up with a huge loss of attribute over the period of burning that metalmind.  

I don't mean to pester the idea I am just trying to make it work in my mind that compounding is always net positive feruchemy but there are limits to how much you can gain to where you are burning just a few molecules at a time and a really full metalmind could last you years and years to burn through gaining the compounding benefits?   

I get the want and desire to need to still tap for attributes but how much of an attribute do you think you can pull out at once?  10x speed?  20x speed?  Honestly to be able to move around at 200 mph on a slow burn is a big deal even if you did have to concede and tap more past that but I am curious what you think those numbers could be.  

I am not wanting to beat a dead horse.  But to go Mach1 for 2 seconds Marasi would have had to withdraw 60billion seconds of doubled speed from the bands of mourning (not accounting for any diminishing returns so it could have been holding two or three or who knows how many times that amount).  How big do you think that metalmind was, and how long would it have to last burning at what you deem a reasonable amount of speed from compounding to still end up being net positive? 

I think the ideas are in the right ballpark but healing is really hard to gauge power and numbers with.  Speed, based on what we know about feruchemy, gives us some good numbers to play around with and I would like to see those numbers work in a way other than "This theory explains Miles."   

How fast do you think Wax could go, and for how long do you think he could do that burning the steel from the bands. 

[Trusk'our]

26 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I like a lot of this.  My question is just this... is there a breakpoint where you actually lose attribute per time burning the metalmind making it net negative?   Or can you just stuff a metalmind so full of attribute that it burns at such a small rate as to keep itself net positive?  

I'm probably being a total neanderthal here, but I'm a little confused. Do you mean "is there a point where when you burn a Metalmind to Compound, you lose Investiture instead of gaining it?" 

If so, no, when you Compound you're just adding more Feruchemical power to the pile by hacking Allomancy.

26 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Trying to limit the metalmind and saying you get x from it based on allomantic strength opens a lot of doors to which you could end up with a huge loss of attribute over the period of burning that metalmind.  

I don't mean to pester the idea I am just trying to make it work in my mind that compounding is always net positive feruchemy but there are limits to how much you can gain to where you are burning just a few molecules at a time and a really full metalmind could last you years and years to burn through gaining the compounding benefits?   

Ah, nope, my neanderthal brain is back. I'm still not sure I understand what you're asking, but I'll give it a shot anyway.

There are practical limits to how much of a Feruchemical attribute you could realistically draw out at once, simply due to storage size (though it's pretty up there as BoM showed us). Although, tapping more at once leads to a loss of total attributes stored because your body (or mind or soul) has to absorb more and more of the Investiture devoted to augmenting the attribute that you're tapping so that you can actually wield it.Plus, you may just have to compress the Investiture into a space that stays the same size but has less room due to more Investiture (i.e., YOU), which may take up more energy as well. But tapping would always be considered positive, since you're adding (though you would eventually get to a point where it doesn't do very much).

 I think that you could continue to tap a Metalmind to ridiculous amounts, but only if you were standing on a floor made into said Metalmind, which limits the practical application somewhat, since it would be difficult to move around.

26 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I think the ideas are in the right ballpark but healing is really hard to gauge power and numbers with.  Speed, based on what we know about feruchemy, gives us some good numbers to play around with and I would like to see those numbers work in a way other than "This theory explains Miles."   

How fast do you think Wax could go, and for how long do you think he could do that burning the steel from the bands. 

I'm not going to even try to determine Miles health and Wax's or Marasi's potential speed from the Bands yet; we just don't know the exact measurements for Feruchemical compression, Compounding rates, or maximum Metalmind capacity (which isn't even linear, apparently). We'd need to know those numbers before we could realistically tackle questions like those.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Trusk'our

[Mistchemist16]

32 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I think that you could continue to tap a Metalmind to ridiculous amounts, but only if you were standing on a floor made into said Metalmind, which limits the practical application somewhat, since it would be difficult to move around.

I can think of two other shenanigans to try to tap metalminds bigger than you.

1. Make vehicles from Metallic Arts grade metals and you can travel. You may miss some attributes, such as F-Steel. But gold, zinc, and chromium are all good choices while driving

2. Make a long cable connected to a hunk of metal. You can probably build them from seperate shipments of metal as long as you identify the whole project as working together. The idea is that if you have a metalmind shape like a pole, you could stire from one end and tap from the other.  Basically an extension cable for Fullborn.

 If you want a lower tech level, armor is a good investment. I favor chainmail so you can move around easier, but plate armor would probably store even more.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Mistchemist16

[Stick The Savant]

2 minutes ago, Mistchemist16 said:

If you want a lower tech level, armor is a good investment. I favor chainmail so you can move around easier, but plate armor would probably store even more.

or you could go high tech and make a mech. 

there's also a pretty good chance that (Sixth of the dusk spoilers)

Spoiler

the ones above from the Sixth of the dust sequel had metalminds incorporated in their suits

 

[Mistchemist16]

10 minutes ago, Stick The Savant said:

or you could go high tech and make a mech. 

there's also a pretty good chance that (Sixth of the dusk spoilers)

  Reveal hidden contents

the ones above from the Sixth of the dust sequel had metalminds incorporated in their suits

 

I mean, Nalthis really awards making mechs since Breaths work by human shape. Use a Breath powered exoskeleton covered in metalminds and perhaps some Roshar fabrials or a Taldain sand blaster. Maybe the real twist is that era 4 is a mech anime.

In all seriousness, what are the best attriubtes to tap in a vehicle/mech? Speed is the only one that doesn’t seem worthwhile unless there’s a way to transfer that to the mech. Zinc, bronze and chromium are all good candidates. You could probably use copper for the user’s manual. Bass, cadmium, and bendalloy make nice life support. You can also just go full anime and add electrum determination. 

Edited March 9, 2023 by Mistchemist16

[alder24]

9 minutes ago, Mistchemist16 said:

 If you want a lower tech level, armor is a good investment. I favor chainmail so you can move around easier, but plate armor would probably store even more.

Common misconception, plate armor doesn't considerably restrict your movement. Having 30 kg of metalminds would be really "handy" for a compounder - that would be basically a Shardplate. Add a sword and shield made out of metalminds and you have a Shardblade and a Half-Shard.

Spoiler

Yata

Could a filled (fully feruchemical charge) metalmind block a Shardblade (or at least, resist a bit)?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it could. Excellent question.

/r/books AMA 2015 (Sept. 3, 2015)