Mistborn: Misting Ratio should be higher than 1:18

[Mistchemist16]

The common concensous of the amount of Mistings for every Mistborn is 1 to 18 in Era 1, based on WoA stating Straff had 18 misting children out of an unknown number. However, that is not completely accurate. A more accurate description would be 1 Mistborn to every 18 mistings of the known types. Since Straff’s bastards were kept secret, I find it extremely unlikely any of them would’ve been tested for metals known only to the Steel Ministry. Given that there are 8 possible Mistings that couldn’t be easily tested for, it’s reasonable to assume that at least one of Straff’s kids was a stealth Misting. In fact, Elend himself could’ve been a Misting of almost any unknown metal . The only ones that would be potentially noticeable are gold, electrum and Atium, as those metals could probably breach the Spiritual Realm if Elend had lerasium and a natural ability. 
 

Given these facts, we can still assume 1:18 is an accurate minimum ratio, but the real number is probably higher. Of course, the 1:18 ratio is more useful for estimating how many active Mistings there were in Era 1  (though not all, as some Ministry members used hidden metals). But even that number doesn’t represent every potential Misting at the time, especially since some stealth Mistings could find jobs with the Ministry, as Yomen did. Regardless, if anyone has estimates about how many hidden Mistings were in the Ministry or who existed all together, I’d certainly be interested in hearing them 

[alder24]

5 hours ago, Mistchemist16 said:

The common concensous of the amount of Mistings for every Mistborn is 1 to 18 in Era 1, based on WoA stating Straff had 18 misting children out of an unknown number. However, that is not completely accurate. A more accurate description would be 1 Mistborn to every 18 mistings of the known types. Since Straff’s bastards were kept secret, I find it extremely unlikely any of them would’ve been tested for metals known only to the Steel Ministry. Given that there are 8 possible Mistings that couldn’t be easily tested for, it’s reasonable to assume that at least one of Straff’s kids was a stealth Misting. In fact, Elend himself could’ve been a Misting of almost any unknown metal . The only ones that would be potentially noticeable are gold, electrum and Atium, as those metals could probably breach the Spiritual Realm if Elend had lerasium and a natural ability. 
 

Given these facts, we can still assume 1:18 is an accurate minimum ratio, but the real number is probably higher. Of course, the 1:18 ratio is more useful for estimating how many active Mistings there were in Era 1  (though not all, as some Ministry members used hidden metals). But even that number doesn’t represent every potential Misting at the time, especially since some stealth Mistings could find jobs with the Ministry, as Yomen did. Regardless, if anyone has estimates about how many hidden Mistings were in the Ministry or who existed all together, I’d certainly be interested in hearing them 

Even the number 1:18 isn't the true one among known Mistings. It's the biggest ratio we know about for sure. Just looking at how many Mistings we saw in Era 1: Ham had a team of Thugs, Breeze had multiple teams of Soothers and Rioters, Clubs with his Smokers, Steel Ministry with hundreds of Soothers, Seekers and Smokers in their soothing stations, all of those Vin had fought with, those used for making spikes etc. There were a lot of Mistings there and only very few Mistborn were known to us. We know for sure about around 10 Mistborns in Era 1, and there were like 200 Mistings in soothing stations in Luthadel alone (30-40 stations, each with 5 Mistings). 

And it really doesn't matter. Mistings of unknown metals are not important to us in most cases as they can't use their powers. And it's impossible to predict how many of them were in Era 1, because Mistings aren't equally distributed across all 16 metals, as proven in Era 2. There are disproportionately more Coinshoters than Pulsers in Era 2. While we were able to calculate something using this 1:18 ratio, it falls apart if you want to include all Mistings of unknown metals (unknown in TFE). 

[cometaryorbit]

Mistborn are way rarer than 1 per 18 Mistings in general. Straff's illegitimate children aren't representative of the nobility in general, since Straff is a Great House (House Venture) Allomancer.

According to Kelsier in TFE, nearly all Mistborn are in the Great Houses. The rest of the nobility very rarely produce Mistborn.

Even among the non-Great Houses, there are stronger and weaker lines. The Cetts are specifically poor in Allomancy.

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Yeah, even though only 8 of 16 metals were known to most of the nobility, it seems like those are the more common powers - so it wasn't literally 50% of Mistings were unknown.

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There were probably thousands of Mistings in the Central Dominance alone. The Soothing Station 200+ were recruited from the Central Dominance, supposedly, and they weren't literally all Soothers / Seekers in the Dominance.