Strategies for Feruchemists

[Trusk'our he/him]

12 minutes ago, Returned said:

I like the approaches you've outlined, but I think that the biggest variable is really how often you want to tap the attributes. Using them to any practical effect seems like you'll just burn through attributes so much more quickly than you could ever store them, especially if you use one of the lower-impact methods to store.

That's a fair point; a Feruchemist's biggest limitation compared to an Allomancer is that they can't use their powers all the time. Not if they want a sizable boost, anyway.

There is actually a section in one of TLM's broadsheet saying that there was either a delivery service or a newspaper delivery service that used Steelrunners. . . I had a hard time believing that Brandon actually wrote that part, as a Steelrunner couldn't use their powers frequently for that kind of job if they wanted a decent boost. A Coinshot would be way, way better for that kind of task since they can use their powers far more reliably. 

17 minutes ago, Returned said:

With that in mind, how and when do you think it would be most efficient/effective to tap the attributes? I imagine there is a lot of scope for tapping just a bit at key times, like Ham burning just a bit of pewter here and there where it counts the most (like just for a moment to recover balance).

Hmm, I'll have to give that some more thought. I'm on my mobile right now, which makes it a lot harder to make a comprehensive list.

[alder24]

2 hours ago, Colors said:

This is great @Trusk'our. A lot of insightful thoughts here. 

I have always questioned the seeming limitation on storing while sleeping.

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I know that Sazed has explicitly stated he cannot store anything but wakefulness while sleeping, but Sazed was a fallible character with limited knowledge and experience at that point in the story, we cannot take his words as absolute, just what one person with that ability understands to be the case. Especially since characters in the Cosmere have made comments before that weren't necessarily true and only reflected their understanding at the time. 

It's pretty clear to me that at least when using Medallions, users can store and tap while sleeping. Malwish Airship crews would need to be able to do these things presumably, and we know in BoM that several of the characters who are wearing medallions and storing weight sleep while riding the airship. 

I suspect it may be one of those things that could have to do with intent and perception, with the correct intent and perception allowing one to store while sleeping. Another possibility is it may only apply in cases where there is an emergent imminent need, such as the ability to tap or store other attributes unconsciously at times. For example, if you're trying to sleep in an ice cave your body may be capable of tapping heat while you are sleeping or unconscious, or in this case if you're in the sky and the only thing keeping you there is being very light you are able to store weight. I think this could tie into the perception/intent aspect too and the necessity creates a subconscious intent for you. The only other option I can think of is that the Medallions are just special for some reason we don't know yet and it is only possible with a Medallion, but not for a natural ferring.

I can understand why it might not be a common ability, because that could make feruchemy OP, but I think if it was a very difficult skill that only the best feruchemists could accomplish (in non-emergency situations) it wouldn't skew things too crazily. 

Personally, I'd love to be a Bendalloy Feruchemist. Might be a small thing, but eating as much as you want without putting on weight would be great. Can you imagine how awesome this would be to someone with Lift's unique abilities?

I doubt it. FIrstly I can't believe that no Feruchemist would try to store something other than wakefulness when sleeping - and if one did that once and it worked, all Feruchemists would know, because they share knowledge. Secondly Mehwish medallions aren't normal metalminds. They are not only unsealed, but they have Identity and life-force of their own. That's why you can store while sleeping, a medallion is doing that for you, just like a  medallion is giving you powers of Feruchemy so you can tap metalminds - you don't tap nicrosil for powers (because you can't, you're not a Feruchemist), a medallion taps it for you. Normal metalminds don't have that. they aren't machines. 

Spoiler

Raddatatta

In Era 1, Sazed says the only thing you can Feruchemically store while sleeping is wakefulness, but in Era 2 they have the sky ships that require everyone to be storing weight to fly and they don't land while people sleep. Was Sazed just wrong, or is that a difference between normal Feruchemy and using the unsealed metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson

Unsealed metalminds, I am moving toward complete—you probably already guessed this—mechanical uses of Investiture, and this indeed is a step toward that. And so we are stepping toward having a little machine that gives you powers. That's what the world wants to try to find. And this is—this being mechanical—we'll just say that the medallions and the things that they're building have more of a life-force, more of an Identity of their own than a traditional metalmind does, even though they're unkeyed and all of this stuff.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 (Dec. 2, 2022)

 

However it's possible to tap at least a goldmind when your life is endangered and healing is necessary for survival. That's when your body's intent takes over and reaches for the source of healing and it would tap a goldmind for you, if you're unconscious - just like Vin and Elend were burning pewter when unconscious. I doubt you can do that with  all metalminds, maybe cadmiummind for oxygen if you're suffocating, but no other metalminds can save you like that. SA spoiler WoB:

Spoiler

Aradanftw

Kaladin and Vin both have used magic subconsciously. Kaladin while training with the bridge plank and drawing in Stormlight, and Vin burning pewter while being beaten. Does that mean that Intent is not always required, or is a simple Intent like "I will be strong" enough to activate the magic system?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to go with the simple Intent answer that you're giving there. So, at the basic level... the more specific and the more powerful you want to be, the more you need to understand your Intent, is where this is. The body has an Intent. Kaladin uses the magic while he's unconscious, right? The Intent is survive, basically the body knowing it needs to survive. And this is possible to an extent with a lot of the magic systems, just kind of in the base, physical sense, your body knowing how to use what it's been given, is going to happen. You're going to see this with other instances in the magic as well. And even kind of not knowing or not wanting to face it, you can get some base level of power in most of the magics. Yes, it's the second one in that you can make the argument that your body just wants to survive, and things like this, but Intent really starts to play into it when you're doing distinct and increasingly powerful things with the magics. Intent is like your ability to focus, right? You can fire a sniper rifle on accident, but hitting the thing that you want to hit with it requires a lot of practice and focus. That practice and focus in the magic systems is often Intent-related.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)

[Colors]

5 hours ago, alder24 said:

I doubt it. FIrstly I can't believe that no Feruchemist would try to store something other than wakefulness when sleeping - and if one did that once and it worked, all Feruchemists would know, because they share knowledge. Secondly Mehwish medallions aren't normal metalminds. They are not only unsealed, but they have Identity and life-force of their own. That's why you can store while sleeping, a medallion is doing that for you, just like a  medallion is giving you powers of Feruchemy so you can tap metalminds - you don't tap nicrosil for powers (because you can't, you're not a Feruchemist), a medallion taps it for you. Normal metalminds don't have that. they aren't machines. 

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Raddatatta

In Era 1, Sazed says the only thing you can Feruchemically store while sleeping is wakefulness, but in Era 2 they have the sky ships that require everyone to be storing weight to fly and they don't land while people sleep. Was Sazed just wrong, or is that a difference between normal Feruchemy and using the unsealed metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson

Unsealed metalminds, I am moving toward complete—you probably already guessed this—mechanical uses of Investiture, and this indeed is a step toward that. And so we are stepping toward having a little machine that gives you powers. That's what the world wants to try to find. And this is—this being mechanical—we'll just say that the medallions and the things that they're building have more of a life-force, more of an Identity of their own than a traditional metalmind does, even though they're unkeyed and all of this stuff.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 (Dec. 2, 2022)

 

However it's possible to tap at least a goldmind when your life is endangered and healing is necessary for survival. That's when your body's intent takes over and reaches for the source of healing and it would tap a goldmind for you, if you're unconscious - just like Vin and Elend were burning pewter when unconscious. I doubt you can do that with  all metalminds, maybe cadmiummind for oxygen if you're suffocating, but no other metalminds can save you like that. SA spoiler WoB:

  Reveal hidden contents

Aradanftw

Kaladin and Vin both have used magic subconsciously. Kaladin while training with the bridge plank and drawing in Stormlight, and Vin burning pewter while being beaten. Does that mean that Intent is not always required, or is a simple Intent like "I will be strong" enough to activate the magic system?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to go with the simple Intent answer that you're giving there. So, at the basic level... the more specific and the more powerful you want to be, the more you need to understand your Intent, is where this is. The body has an Intent. Kaladin uses the magic while he's unconscious, right? The Intent is survive, basically the body knowing it needs to survive. And this is possible to an extent with a lot of the magic systems, just kind of in the base, physical sense, your body knowing how to use what it's been given, is going to happen. You're going to see this with other instances in the magic as well. And even kind of not knowing or not wanting to face it, you can get some base level of power in most of the magics. Yes, it's the second one in that you can make the argument that your body just wants to survive, and things like this, but Intent really starts to play into it when you're doing distinct and increasingly powerful things with the magics. Intent is like your ability to focus, right? You can fire a sniper rifle on accident, but hitting the thing that you want to hit with it requires a lot of practice and focus. That practice and focus in the magic systems is often Intent-related.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)

What about heat if you were unconscious slowly freezing to death?

[alder24]

10 hours ago, Colors said:

What about heat if you were unconscious slowly freezing to death?

Maybe? Healing would still probably be the first one your body would reach for, but heat could work too.

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 1/16/2024 at 7:57 AM, alder24 said:

If you take two cups of water, both 1 L each, each of them have 5% of salt diffused in them, and then you mixed them together, will you get a solution with 10% salt in it? No, you get a 2 L solution with 5% salt. You need to first do the work, use some energy to get this 10% solution you want - like by heating up and vaporizing some water, so the remaining salt will be more concentrated in the solution. 

The water is the time for how long you stored, the salt is the percentage of attributes stored during that time. You want to have a higher percentage, you have to use some time to compress the attribute. Sure, it’s not a perfect analogy but it’s something. You have to use investiture to compress your attribute and because Feruchemy is end-neutral - nothing comes from the outside sources - you have to use what you stored in your metalminds. Your own attribute has to be used to compress it to higher percentages. That’s why you get less and less of it with each iteration of compression. That's why 5% for 20 min doesn't equal 20% in 5 min.

Sure, some of your attribute is siphoned for your spirit web to adapt, that’s also a contributing factor for your loss of the attribute, but it’s one of two factors. And because you get only some minor effects from this siphoning, the vastly more influential factor is the loss due to compression.

I'm still somewhat confused as to what you mean here.

It seems like you're trying to count percentages of Storing like they're individual units, not general amounts of Investiture.

Now, I could see this working if the natural attributes of a Feruchemist (or any person) require exponentially more Investiture to function. For example, if a person who can normally lift 100 lbs. had 5 units of Investiture in their Spiritweb dedicated to their muscle mass, while a bodybuilder who could lift 200 lbs. had not 10 units of strength-related Investiture, but 12-20, or something like that. If this is the case, Feruchemical percentages make total sense, as that's just how the Cosmere mechanics work.

This seems hard for me to believe though, as you have the same amount of muscle mass pound for pound to lead to your strength (not taking things into account like different types of muscle and muscle density), which makes it seem counterintuitive to me that you'd need exponentially more Investiture in the SR to symbolize that effect. Then again, this could be a fallacy on my part (this is still fantasy, after all), but I'd need real evidence to believe otherwise.

As such, I still think that the Bit by Bit tactic could work quite effectively, as the attributes you Store should, from what I can tell, yield a similar if not equal amount of Investiture to Storing at a higher rate but over a shorter period of time, assuming that the time and rate factors are equally switched.

Of course, if you see a misplaced notion of mine or a misinterpretation I had on your words, please let me know so that I can better understand.

[alder24]

3 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I'm still somewhat confused as to what you mean here.

It seems like you're trying to count percentages of Storing like they're individual units, not general amounts of Investiture.

This is just an imperfect analogy. You need to provide energy to make something more concentrated. To compress stored attributes, you need to provide some energy to compress it and because Feruchemy is end-neutral, you can use only what's in metalminds. So the process is using some of the stored attributes as energy to compress the rest of the attributes to a higher percentage - that reduces the time by more than half. The more compression cycles you want to have, the more investiture is used as the energy to facilitate that compression, the more attributes you lose, the less time you get from it.

If you have two metalminds, one has 5% for 20 min of attribute, the other has 20% for 5 min, they might essentially have the same amount of investiture (if we assume they were both stored by the same person). But if you want to use the first one with 5%/20 min and tap it with diminishing returns to get 20% of attribute from it, you won't be able to use it for 5 minutes. You need to compress it 3x - first time to get to 10%, second time to 15%, last to 20%. This causes some of investiture to be used to compress the rest. After the first cycle you will have less than 10 minutes, let's say 8, another step will make it less than 4, let's say 3, and the last will make it less than 1.5 minutes, let's say 1 minute. If you now compare it with the second metalmind, you essentially lost most of the attribute just to compress the remaining one, you have only 20% for only 1 minute, instead of 20% for 5 minutes.

I used this WoB for this example. Each increment cuts time by more than half. The point is by compressing the attributes you will lose more and it won't be equal if you were to just store at greater rate for less time. 

Spoiler

Sporkify

This is more towards the whole physics stuff, but is Feruchemy really balanced? If it gives diminishing returns, wouldn't this end up as a net loss of power?

Brandon Sanderson

It doesn't diminish. Or, well, it does—but only if you compound it. You get 1 for 1 back, but compounding the power requires an expenditure of the power itself. For instance, if you are weak for one hour, you can gain the lost strength for one hour. But that's not really that much strength. After all, you probably weren't as weak as zero people during that time. So if you want to be as strong as two men, you couldn't do it for a full hour. You'd have to spend some energy to compound, then spend the compounded energy itself.

In more mathematical terms, let's say you spend one hour at 50% strength. You could then spend one hour at 150% strength, or perhaps 25 min at 200% strength, or maybe 10min at 250% strength. Each increment is harder, and therefore 'strains' you more and burns your energy more quickly. And since most Feruchemists don't store at 50% strength, but instead at something like 80% strength (it feels like much more when they do it, but you can't really push the body to that much forced weakness without risking death) you can burn through a few day's strength in a very short time if you aren't careful.

Footnote: This question was asked when fueling Feruchemy with Allomancy had only been seen in Rashek. As such, the term compounding is used purely to reference tapping at a higher rate than can be stored.
Hero of Ages Q&A - Time Waster's Guide (Oct. 15, 2008)

 

[Trusk'our he/him]

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

You need to provide energy to make something more concentrated. To compress stored attributes, you need to provide some energy to compress it and because Feruchemy is end-neutral, you can use only what's in metalminds. So the process is using some of the stored attributes as energy to compress the rest of the attributes to a higher percentage - that reduces the time by more than half. The more compression cycles you want to have, the more investiture is used as the energy to facilitate that compression, the more attributes you lose, the less time you get from it.

Agreed. When Tapping an attribute at a higher rate, you always will lose some efficiency in the process, requiring you to expend more Investiture to achieve the same level of effect.

If you Stored at 40% strength for 1 hour and then Tapped at 80% extra strength, you wouldn't have 30 minutes of Tapping, you'd have less due to compression loss and extra Investiture being siphoned off to increase your body's ability to use that strength.

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

If you have two metalminds, one has 5% for 20 min of attribute, the other has 20% for 5 min, they might essentially have the same amount of investiture (if we assume they were both stored by the same person). But if you want to use the first one with 5%/20 min and tap it with diminishing returns to get 20% of attribute from it, you won't be able to use it for 5 minutes. You need to compress it 3x - first time to get to 10%, second time to 15%, last to 20%. This causes some of investiture to be used to compress the rest. After the first cycle you will have less than 10 minutes, let's say 8, another step will make it less than 4, let's say 3, and the last will make it less than 1.5 minutes, let's say 1 minute. If you now compare it with the second metalmind, you essentially lost most of the attribute just to compress the remaining one, you have only 20% for only 1 minute, instead of 20% for 5 minutes.

I wish to respectfully disagree with this; I believe that it is the Investiture of the Metalmind that's important, not necessarily how you got it.

If you used Compounding to fill a Metalmind with 100 units of Investiture and you filled another Metalmind through traditional methods over the course of a month with 100 units of Investiture, then Tapping them at the same rate would yield the same level of effect.

In other words, let's say a Feruchemist has decided to Store strength one Pewtermind at 5% for 20 minutes and another at 20% for 5 minutes. If it's true that both are filled with the same amount of Investiture, than Tapping either Pewtermind enough to get, say, 10% extra strength would lead to the same level of compression loss, as the same amount of compression is done when drawing the Investiture into the Feruchemist. You don't compress based on the rate at which you Stored, you compress based on the amount of Investiture drawn to produce a given effect.

I think that this must be the way that it works, as if you were to attempt to apply the exact folding rule over with alternative sources of Investiture, it doesn't hold up. You don't Store attributes at a percentage when Compounding or absorbing Purified Dor, you have an amount of Investiture that you can use, and the rate at which you use it determines your level of efficiency, just as with any other Feruchemy.

Quote

If you have two metalminds, one has 5% for 20 min of attribute, the other has 20% for 5 min, they might essentially have the same amount of investiture (if we assume they were both stored by the same person).

This part, specifically, I don't understand; if you were to fill a Metalmind with 10% of your attribute over months and months until it was full and had another Metalmind that was filled to the brim from Compounding, and they had the same exact amount of Investiture, how would they not equal the same rate of efficiency when Tapped?

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

I used this WoB for this example. Each increment cuts time by more than half. The point is by compressing the attributes you will lose more and it won't be equal if you were to just store at greater rate for less time. 

  Reveal hidden contents

Sporkify

This is more towards the whole physics stuff, but is Feruchemy really balanced? If it gives diminishing returns, wouldn't this end up as a net loss of power?

Brandon Sanderson

It doesn't diminish. Or, well, it does—but only if you compound it. You get 1 for 1 back, but compounding the power requires an expenditure of the power itself. For instance, if you are weak for one hour, you can gain the lost strength for one hour. But that's not really that much strength. After all, you probably weren't as weak as zero people during that time. So if you want to be as strong as two men, you couldn't do it for a full hour. You'd have to spend some energy to compound, then spend the compounded energy itself.

In more mathematical terms, let's say you spend one hour at 50% strength. You could then spend one hour at 150% strength, or perhaps 25 min at 200% strength, or maybe 10min at 250% strength. Each increment is harder, and therefore 'strains' you more and burns your energy more quickly. And since most Feruchemists don't store at 50% strength, but instead at something like 80% strength (it feels like much more when they do it, but you can't really push the body to that much forced weakness without risking death) you can burn through a few day's strength in a very short time if you aren't careful.

Footnote: This question was asked when fueling Feruchemy with Allomancy had only been seen in Rashek. As such, the term compounding is used purely to reference tapping at a higher rate than can be stored.
Hero of Ages Q&A - Time Waster's Guide (Oct. 15, 2008)

I don't believe that this WoB supports your statement very well.

First of all, it's nearly 16 years old. So old that the term "Compounding" hadn't even been made official yet. Many things had yet to be decided with the Metallic Arts, such as how Atium shouldn't have been able to have been Pushed or Pulled on Allomantically (by most Allomancers, anyway) due to its level of Investedness, or how F-iron seemed to have much worse impacts on Sazed's movement when Tapped than it does on Wax, or how the Atium we see in era 1 is actually an alloy, not the pure thing.

Second, this is seems like a general explanation. Like he's trying to convey the general sense of how Feruchemy works rather than give pinpoint accurate numbers.

Third, this example doesn't give a contrast between two different rates of Storing and times spend doing them, merely one example and the fact that Tapping at a higher rate gives less overall affect for the amount of attribute Tapped.

Edited March 3, 2024 by Trusk'our

[alder24]

Didn't you originally disagree that you lose the attribute to compression when tapping at a rate greater than stored? Wasn't this the whole point? Because I responded to you with that in mind and that's what I tried to prove to you, and you now agree to it, so I don't know what this discussion is about. 

On 1/11/2024 at 5:31 PM, alder24 said:

The loss of investiture in diminishing returns is due to compression of attributes. You need to compress this 5% to 10% and that takes investiture. If you have 20 compressions just to get 100% you're gonna lose a lot of investiture and that's why you get only a minute from all of this. It's not about "protection about the dangers of the power" - this was never said to be a contributing factor to the loss and it's likely miniscule. 

On 1/16/2024 at 7:01 AM, Trusk'our said:

I respectfully wish to disagree; I believe Brandon is speaking about Tapping more in general, not necessarily about the actual rate at which the attribute was originally Stored. Essentially, my current belief is that since Storing doesn't take into account the necessity of adapting your Spiritweb to use the power, storing at 5% for 20 minutes equals the same amount of stored attribute as Storing at 20% for 5 minutes

 

10 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

You don't compress based on the rate at which you Stored, you compress based on the amount of Investiture drawn to produce a given effect.

You do. We've never seen any Feruchemist tapping less than the rate at which he stored. From the WoB, you compress with increments of your storing rate - you store 50% of an attribute, you can compress to 100%, 150%, 200% etc. You can't store 50% and tap only 10%. On the other hand books often say you double, triple or quadruple your attribute - still it depends on your storing rate.

That's why from the tapping perspective, if you have 2 metalminds, one with 5% for 20 min, other with 20% with 5 min and you want to tap 20%, or let's say 40%, then in both cases it's far better to tap the second one, already filled with 20%, otherwise you will lose most of your attribute to facilitate compression. So from the tapping perspective, you would get more investiture from the metalmind that already has 20%, than from the one with 5%.

18 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I think that this must be the way that it works, as if you were to attempt to apply the exact folding rule over with alternative sources of Investiture, it doesn't hold up. You don't Store attributes at a percentage when Compounding or absorbing Purified Dor, you have an amount of Investiture that you can use, and the rate at which you use it determines your level of efficiency, just as with any other Feruchemy.

Respectfully disagree. In Feruchemy you always deal with percentages. When you compound, you take the original rate of storage in metalminds and multiply it by the compounding rate, getting greater rate and more attributes. You get more investiture, in the form of stronger and vaster attribute. You don't even have to store the compound attribute, you can use it directly and I believe it would be delivered at a fixed rate - it's possible Paalm was doing just that. I'm expressing myself very poorly here, I hope you get what I want to say. 

Spoiler

Kurkistan

If you spiked out Miles' Feruchemical gold, would he be able to burn his Allomantic reserves [read: Feruchemical reserves using Allomancy] and heal it back?

Brandon Sanderson

If you spiked out his ability to heal gold and somehow left him alive?

Kurkistan

Yeah, but still having Allomancy.

Brandon Sanderson

Still has Allomancy...

Kurkistan

And he’s like in the middle of burning a goldmind.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that would still work. It'd still have a Spiritual Connection to him.

Kurkistan

So if you're a Coinshot and you get [spiked] to have Feruchemical steel, and then you lose the spike after making a store, you can still Compound that for speed?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes... Yeah, that should still work.

Kurkistan

Was Paalm doing that?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a RAFO.

Shadows of Self Chicago signing (Oct. 12, 2015)

 

29 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I don't believe that this WoB supports your statement very well.

First of all, it's nearly 16 years old. So old that the term "Compounding" hadn't even been made official yet. Many things had yet to be decided with the Metallic Arts, such as how Atium shouldn't have been able to have been Pushed or Pulled on Allomantically (by most Allomancers, anyway) due to its level of Investedness, or how F-iron seemed to have much worse impacts on Sazed's movement when Tapped than it does on Wax, or how the Atium we see in era 1 is actually an alloy, not the pure thing.

Disagree again. While some mechanics were not clearly defined back then, diminishing returns were well developed back then, being the backbone of Feruchemy. My point was to just poove that compression returns cause loss of attribute to compression.

37 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Second, this is seems like a general explanation. Like he's trying to convey the general sense of how Feruchemy works rather than give pinpoint accurate numbers.

Yes, of course. Numbers are just an example to make it easier to understand. It's just to show that you lose attributes.

38 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Third, this example doesn't give a contrast between two different rates of Storing and times spend doing them, merely one example and the fact that Tapping at a higher rate gives less overall affect for the amount of attribute Tapped.

My point is to show that from the tapping perspective, if you want to have an attribute for longer, you use a metalmind that is stored at a higher rate because you lose less to compression than a metalmind that is stored at a lower rate, because you need to compress the second one more than the first one. Again, the example of "one with 5% for 20 min, other with 20% with 5 min." So if you use 40% for the longest, you use the metalmind with 20% and it will give you more investiture then the first one, because less attribute was lost to compression, even if both started with essentially the same amount of attribute. 

[Trusk'our he/him]

6 hours ago, alder24 said:

Didn't you originally disagree that you lose the attribute to compression when tapping at a rate greater than stored? Wasn't this the whole point? Because I responded to you with that in mind and that's what I tried to prove to you, and you now agree to it, so I don't know what this discussion is about. 

You eventually persuaded me to believe in the idea of the compression loss being due to actual attributes being Tapped, not necessarily to just the siphoning off of attributes.

What I was disagreeing with here was the idea that percentages of your attributes are what ultimately determine the rate of loss for Feruchemy. I believe it has more to do with the total amount of Investiture that you use, so a Feruchemist Tapping 10 units of Investiture is going to face the same loss of attributes as another Feruchemist Tapping 10 units of Investiture, regardless of the time or rate of Store they spent to get that Investiture.

6 hours ago, alder24 said:

You do. We've never seen any Feruchemist tapping less than the rate at which he stored. From the WoB, you compress with increments of your storing rate - you store 50% of an attribute, you can compress to 100%, 150%, 200% etc. You can't store 50% and tap only 10%. On the other hand books often say you double, triple or quadruple your attribute - still it depends on your storing rate.

So, you're saying that you don't think that a Feruchemist could choose to Tap at a slower rate than at which they Stored? For example, you think that if a Steelrunner were to Store at 40% of their speed they couldn't later Tap at a 10% or 20% bonus to their physical speed?

6 hours ago, alder24 said:

Respectfully disagree. In Feruchemy you always deal with percentages. When you compound, you take the original rate of storage in metalminds and multiply it by the compounding rate, getting greater rate and more attributes. You get more investiture, in the form of stronger and vaster attribute. You don't even have to store the compound attribute, you can use it directly and I believe it would be delivered at a fixed rate - it's possible Paalm was doing just that. I'm expressing myself very poorly here, I hope you get what I want to say. 

I don't believe this is the case; Allomancy gives a set amount of Investiture at specific rate (which can be toggled a little then Flaring or maintaining a low Burn) when Burning based on your Allomantic strength and the speed at which a metal Burns.

Compounding does require that you Burn the Invested portions of your Metalmind though, so filling it up completely is necessary to Compound all of the metal into Feruchemical attributes.

Spoiler

Worldbuilders AMA - Arcanum (coppermind.net)

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.

 

6 hours ago, alder24 said:

Disagree again. While some mechanics were not clearly defined back then, diminishing returns were well developed back then, being the backbone of Feruchemy. My point was to just poove that compression returns cause loss of attribute to compression.

My point is to show that from the tapping perspective, if you want to have an attribute for longer, you use a metalmind that is stored at a higher rate because you lose less to compression than a metalmind that is stored at a lower rate, because you need to compress the second one more than the first one. Again, the example of "one with 5% for 20 min, other with 20% with 5 min." So if you use 40% for the longest, you use the metalmind with 20% and it will give you more investiture then the first one, because less attribute was lost to compression, even if both started with essentially the same amount of attribute. 

I disagree with these, but I have already given my statements on why I believe them to be the case.

Edited March 4, 2024 by Trusk'our

[alder24]

16 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

What I was disagreeing with here was the idea that percentages of your attributes are what ultimately determine the rate of loss for Feruchemy. I believe it has more to do with the total amount of Investiture that you use, so a Feruchemist Tapping 10 units of Investiture is going to face the same loss of attributes as another Feruchemist Tapping 10 units of Investiture, regardless of the time or rate of Store they spent to get that Investiture.

I think I agree - if they do the same amount of compression cycles. The more times you compress, the more you lose. Tapping 5x loses less investiture than tapping 10x, no matter the outcome percentage.

16 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

So, you're saying that you don't think that a Feruchemist could choose to Tap at a slower rate than at which they Stored? For example, you think that if a Steelrunner were to Store at 40% of their speed they couldn't later Tap at a 10% or 20% bonus to their physical speed?

I'm 100% sure they can't do that as for right now, I doubt it would be ever possible. That's one of Feruchemy's limitations, you get what you stored. 

16 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

I don't believe this is the case; Allomancy gives a set amount of Investiture at specific rate (which can be toggled a little then Flaring or maintaining a low Burn) when Burning based on your Allomantic strength and the speed at which a metal Burns.

For that you need a lot of skill, but yes. With this in mind you can use that in Compounding, that's true. 

[Duxredux he/him]

6 hours ago, alder24 said:

I'm 100% sure they can't do that as for right now, I doubt it would be ever possible. That's one of Feruchemy's limitations, you get what you stored. 

Mm... not exactly, or at least there's room for generalization or adaptation from my reading. When a Bloodmaker stores health they become generally sick, but when tapping the magic specifically targets the areas that are most deadly. We see this when Wayne takes an explosion to the back in AoL and when he falls to his death during Spoiled Tomato in BoM. This is not the standard for all Cosmere healing - general Cosmere spoiler
 

Spoiler

When Raoden was trying to heal Roial as a Reod Elantrian he blamed his incomplete knowledge of the healing modifiers, so his magic was generally healing everything from Roial's liver spots on down but not specifically targeting the stab wound gushing blood. Now this could be due to the external nature of the healing, a quirk of the exact programmability of AonDor, or the trickle of power available to a Reod Elantrian, nevertheless the magical triage and treatment that we see with Wayne is not universal. Wayne isn't limited to healing a running nose or a general ill feeling, and he doesn't need to symptoms of a gunshot wound to heal it.

The blanked Connection Medallions also perform tasks that the original person storing Connection may not have been able to do - I'm not sure, but it sounded like it was adapting based on utilization when Allik described it. When Wayne's back gets blown off, Wax notes that Wayne has to work much more slowly when he doesn't have a lot of health stored. Now granted he's almost certainly tapping faster than when he stores over the course of a few weeks laying in bed drunk, so that may not be the most tidy of examples, but if Feruchemical storage and access works as you say then there's some stuff that has to be working behind the scenes that needs to be addressed. For example, Wax stores at a variety of weight percentages depending on what he needs to be doing and how low his Ironminds are after his stunts, though I think he often stores 30% typically. If that power is accessed at the exact percentages that he stores them, then why wouldn't there be fluctuations of weight when he starts tapping? As the investiture gets utilized why wouldn't there be random jumps in power based on when he consumes 30% storage, 25%, or 80%? Wax seems to know instinctively how many times heavier he is getting, so... is it the magic naturally averages out the power when compressed or modulates the output to reduce the fluctuation? If so, then what limits it from accessing the power at slower rates than it was stored?

Now I'm not an expert, but Feruchemy doesn't really work the way most storage devices at least as I interpret it or understand them. Let's do a few comparisons. 

• Glass of water. Pour the material to be stored into the container. Issue here is that an Archivist can access specific memories and volumes of text through indexing - so it seems the information is directly accessible and not just... dumped in.
• Data storage devices (DVDs, Blu-ray, flash drives, SSDs) - these work by writing information to an physical sector on the device itself. In the old days it was done optically or with magnets (back when you had to be careful not to put a magnet near floppy disks or hard drives), now I think it's largely done through electricity and transistors. Here's the catch - either Feruchemy only works with straight physical contact with the power being stored directly from the skin contact directly to the surface of the metal and the typical bracers are much larger than they need to be or the attribute stored can move around. See the issue with a glass of water.
• Batteries - for these the "storage" often is not directly in the format of power produced, but are instead chemical reagents that can store potential energy to be converted back into electricity when used. Now I guess it's possible Feruchemy does something similar in that the power is transformed or encoded into the metal itself, but again, how does this work for information storage?

Yeah... basically I've been on a kick learning about information storage and I don't get Feruchemy because it's supernaturally good at read/writing and bypasses many of the complications that exist with IRL systems. Sazed dumped the entirety of his stored knowledge into his mind without apparent losses on Ascension (since he recreated the books and gave them to the survivors, but that's a weird case anyway). Rate of retrieval matters for strength, speed, or health, but not memory?

 

Basically... I think you're making assumptions. Possibly correct ones, but I think there's a good bit that would have to be working under the covers to create the rules you describe.

Edited March 4, 2024 by Duxredux

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

Mm... not exactly, or at least there's room for generalization or adaptation from my reading.

I said "as for right now"  

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

When a Bloodmaker stores health they become generally sick, but when tapping the magic specifically targets the areas that are most deadly. We see this when Wayne takes an explosion to the back in AoL and when he falls to his death during Spoiled Tomato in BoM. 

Health is one of the most loosely defined attributes. But the fact it can be focused on specific wounds doesn't really tell us anything about rate of tapping compared to rate of storing. And I disagree, it's quite a standard mechanism. Cosmere spoilers:

Spoiler

Raoden lacked proper Command, that's why he was unable to heal the wound specifically. Aons are Commands, just like words are Commands in Awakening. Other magic systems require just your intent - F-gold, Stormlight, Regrowth for example. 

 

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

The blanked Connection Medallions also perform tasks that the original person storing Connection may not have been able to do - I'm not sure, but it sounded like it was adapting based on utilization when Allik described it.

The metallion held blanked Connection, which means it wasn't connected to anything. But Connection has to be tied to something so it snaps to the nearest place. BoM ch 22:

Quote

“Because we’re in your lands,” he said. “The visitor always has to wear the medallion. It’s filled with Connection, yah? Blank Connection, to no place. But Connection can’t just be connected to nothing, so when you tap it, it reaches out and connects you to the place where you are. Makes your soul think you were raised in this place instead, so your language changes.”

 

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

When Wayne's back gets blown off, Wax notes that Wayne has to work much more slowly when he doesn't have a lot of health stored.

That's because of loss to diminishing returns - he can heal more being slower, because he doesn't lose investiture to compression. 

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

For example, Wax stores at a variety of weight percentages depending on what he needs to be doing and how low his Ironminds are after his stunts, though I think he often stores 30% typically. If that power is accessed at the exact percentages that he stores them, then why wouldn't there be fluctuations of weight when he starts tapping? As the investiture gets utilized why wouldn't there be random jumps in power based on when he consumes 30% storage, 25%, or 80%? Wax seems to know instinctively how many times heavier he is getting, so... is it the magic naturally averages out the power when compressed or modulates the output to reduce the fluctuation? If so, then what limits it from accessing the power at slower rates than it was stored?

It's a good point, but it might be just an intent thing. He wants to get 10x heavier - his intent will compress any rate into 1000%, one will need more compressions, other will need less. There is no fluctuation because his intent is to be 10x heavier. Outcome matters too. 

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

• Data storage devices (DVDs, Blu-ray, flash drives, SSDs) - these work by writing information to an physical sector on the device itself. In the old days it was done optically or with magnets (back when you had to be careful not to put a magnet near floppy disks or hard drives), now I think it's largely done through electricity and transistors. Here's the catch - either Feruchemy only works with straight physical contact with the power being stored directly from the skin contact directly to the surface of the metal and the typical bracers are much larger than they need to be or the attribute stored can move around. See the issue with a glass of water.

I see no reason why the attribute can't "move around" in the metalmind - having the right intent fixes the glass of water, you pull what you want no matter in how many fragments it's stored, or where it's stored. And Investiture is in SR, distance has no meaning there. 

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

Yeah... basically I've been on a kick learning about information storage and I don't get Feruchemy because it's supernaturally good at read/writing and bypasses many of the complications that exist with IRL systems. Sazed dumped the entirety of his stored knowledge into his mind without apparent losses on Ascension (since he recreated the books and gave them to the survivors, but that's a weird case anyway).

Feruchemy is magic. That's it. While the investiture takes up physical/spiritual "space," you can touch a metalmind wherever you want and you can tap/store from the entire volume of the metalmind. It's probably because this is happening more in SR not in PR, or investiture can just freely flow through the metalmind into you (still in SR). Either way it's happening in the SR, not PR. 

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

Rate of retrieval matters for strength, speed, or health, but not memory?

Because you don't store memories in percentages, you just store it and it's gone from your mind. 

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

Basically... I think you're making assumptions. Possibly correct ones, but I think there's a good bit that would have to be working under the covers to create the rules you describe.

Yes, some of this is assumptions. It's based on examples from books, WoBs or current understanding of the mechanics involved - it can change in the future with new information. We've been always told that you can tap what you stored at the same rate and compress it to get it at greater rate - but we've never seen it being decompressed. That may be possible, but it would still require energy to do, thus loss of attribute in the process. 

[Duxredux he/him]

@alder24, I'm just going to reply to your whole response in total. Incidentally I think in paragraphs not sentences and the context of earlier statements are meant to be shaped by later statements, so you won't have to reassert concepts that I actually agree with later on in my post (my greater Cosmere example I rather specifically use as a case that magical triage for healing is not universal).

As I think about it, I'm not happy with "you don't store memories in percentages, you just store it and it's gone from your mind.", as that still doesn't explain to me what difference that makes. Now if there's simply a difference between physical, cognitive, and spiritual attribute storage methods, that I'm okay with.

I'm not content with the "it's magic" explanation for as many of the things you're pushing into that envelope because it could very well matter the exact nature of how the Investiture is stored in the Metalmind. 

• A situation that I don't think has come up yet in the books that I can think of but seems like an obvious scenario: What happens if a Metalmind is cut or corroded? Are the memories in a Coppermind stored in contiguous chunks (i.e. if you were to cut Sazed's bracers in half you're more likely to get complete books up until the break) or if it's fluid will you basically get random chunks of mostly meaningless data?
• Metalminds can be filled to a maximum capacity, is that capacity based on total Investiture or is it based on storage time like you can store 200 hours of attribute per 100 grams of metal, regardless of the percent you were storing each hour? It's probably the first, but if it's based on runtime then your Metalminds basically have the same issue as old hard drives that had to defragment.
• If Wax has only stored 10 seconds where he's storing 10% of his maximum weight while the majority of his storage is 30%, what happens if he taps 10% for longer than 10 seconds? This is more or less the Steelrunner example, you were discussing with @Trusk'our, but a look at the actual mechanics when in use. This is way less intuitive in use than you would think. The solution is of course to simply store at lower capacities, so it makes it a weird and not particularly difficult limitation to get around.
  • If a Firesoul Ferring ends up in a normally lethal fire and stores heat to survive does this mean they can't tap that section of storage without risking catching everything around them on fire because they can't regulate the output below a threshold? 
• Future Sentry Ferring chugs coffee to store Wakefulness. Based on WoBs, some of the jittery caffeine effects are retained on tapping. If they have 10 hours of regular sleep, and then the equivalent of 2 cups of coffee in stored Wakefulness, do they have control over which store they are tapping? Do they just tap until BAM jitters? Can they intentionally draw across multiple storages so that they basically average out the caffeine with the regular sleep?

This is what I mean that there's ramifications for this limitation of Feruchemy that basically hasn't come up as far as I know. You see, I too read the books and WoBs along with the current mechanics as they are understood and this is what I see as some of the complications for what you propose when I think of use cases. Some of this like the WoB on caffeine I'm not how to reconcile with other models, but I don't think I've seen any Feruchemist include lower tap limit thresholds into any of their decision making or having to create a gradation of stores for utility. It's mostly store now, tap when you need it. Sure, I can't think of a time that a Feruchemist tried to do a lower tap, but then if you're a Feruchemist and you keep having to keep pace with Mistings, Mistborn, Inquisitors, and Koloss, you pretty much have to tap with high compression to survive the constant high power available to Allomancy and Hemalurgy.

 

[Trusk'our he/him]

3 hours ago, Duxredux said:

I'm not content with the "it's magic" explanation for as many of the things you're pushing into that envelope because it could very well matter the exact nature of how the Investiture is stored in the Metalmind. 

• A situation that I don't think has come up yet in the books that I can think of but seems like an obvious scenario: What happens if a Metalmind is cut or corroded? Are the memories in a Coppermind stored in contiguous chunks (i.e. if you were to cut Sazed's bracers in half you're more likely to get complete books up until the break) or if it's fluid will you basically get random chunks of mostly meaningless data?

That's a good point. Honestly, I could see it going either way; memories' usefulness could be completely lost if split, as some might be divided in such a way as to lose their cohesiveness.

Also, just found this WoB stating that Copperminds can be compared to many smaller "virtual" Copperminds. This is mostly just kind of interesting and not really pertaining to the question though.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/398/#e13242

Paleo

When you store multiple memories in a coppermind is it still technically one large coppermind or could you say it's more like a ton of "virtual" metalminds, because you're technically tapping individual ones?

Brandon Sanderson

More like the second. I would say that's accurate. I mean I'm not sure that really aligns one to one but it is another good model, though.

Aaaaand I just found this WoB, which states that a broken Coppermind is probably going to have unusable contents, though reforging the Metalmind could possibly make them become usable again, or at least you could conceivably recover them through some method.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/394/#e12887

Questioner

If a coppermind was to be split in half, would the contents of it be destroyed? Or would there be, in the two separate halves, <of different contents?>?

Brandon Sanderson

You should err on the side of being destroyed, though not permanently, is what I would say on that. There are ways to approach it that wouldn't, but generally if you're ruining a metalmind, the Investiture will stay in it, and if you know what you're doing you can make use of that, but in most cases, it's not gonna fare well.

 

3 hours ago, Duxredux said:

• Metalminds can be filled to a maximum capacity, is that capacity based on total Investiture or is it based on storage time like you can store 200 hours of attribute per 100 grams of metal, regardless of the percent you were storing each hour? It's probably the first, but if it's based on runtime then your Metalminds basically have the same issue as old hard drives that had to defragment.

I would assume Investiture as well. Percentages alone fall apart when dealing with alternative sources of Investiture- such as Compounding- that don't function by percentages.

Also, I regarding how Investiture is Stored in a Metalmind, it's not actually supposed to take up physical space, but it's more of an extra-dimensional space that wouldn't exist IRL. 

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/368/#e11605

Questioner

When magic Invested in an object-- Does the Investiture act like electrons when it reacts with the matter?

Brandon Sanderson

Not quite, but I could see that metaphor working to explain it. But it's not quite there. The Investiture kind of-- If you had a piece of Invested material from the cosmere here, you would not be able to measure the Investiture in any way. It occupies a space that doesn't exist in our universe, if that makes sense. But in the cosmere you could measure it scientifically with an instrument that wouldn't do anything here, like trying to measure a dimension that we can't perceive, something like that. The electron metaphor is a decent one, but it's not exactly how I'm imagining it.

Additionally, a Metalmind's storage space isn't linear, it increases by certain size categories.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/2/#e234

Questioner

I was wondering if the size of a piece of metal determines the amount of Feruchemical charge that can be stored in it.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

So how does that scale, like, in terms of the volume or mass of the metal or...

Brandon Sanderson

It-- So I've talked about this before, I'm trying to remember exactly what I've told people-- It does not scale as logically as you think it does. How about that? It's more like certain thresholds. You can have a-- You can store a Hemalurgic or Feruchemical charge even in very small pieces of metal, but larger pieces of metal will let you get more.

Questioner

So it's kind of like there are different classes of sizes?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, kind of like that.

So I'd say that when Storing in a Metalmind, it's going to be a bit different than with normal, physical storage. It's probably a Realmatic thing, Involving the Cognitive and Spiritual Realms somewhat, as Investiture pierces all three Realms.

Okay, just found this WoB while searching for the Metalmind's Investiture taking up an extra-dimensional space. It says that the rate of Storage isn't supposed to affect the total Investiture capacity of a Metalmind, which supports the idea of a Metalmind's storage space being about Investiture rather than percentage rate.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/153/#e2802

Lance Alvein (paraphrased)

Does the rate of Feruchemical storage of an attribute affect the total amount stored in a metalmind?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It was not intended to be.

I believe this also supports my earlier idea on how Feruchemical storing rates don't affect the total outcome of your Tapping; it's related to total Investiure, not the rate of Storing.

4 hours ago, Duxredux said:

• Future Sentry Ferring chugs coffee to store Wakefulness. Based on WoBs, some of the jittery caffeine effects are retained on tapping. If they have 10 hours of regular sleep, and then the equivalent of 2 cups of coffee in stored Wakefulness, do they have control over which store they are tapping? Do they just tap until BAM jitters? Can they intentionally draw across multiple storages so that they basically average out the caffeine with the regular sleep?

I would assume that the Feruchemist could tell the difference between the different charges with practice, as that's just something they're normally able to do; they can tell how Invested their Metalminds are in a general sense, and of course Copper Feruchemy lets you distinguish between many, many different charges, allowing you to pick which ones are Tapped.

4 hours ago, Duxredux said:

This is what I mean that there's ramifications for this limitation of Feruchemy that basically hasn't come up as far as I know. You see, I too read the books and WoBs along with the current mechanics as they are understood and this is what I see as some of the complications for what you propose when I think of use cases. Some of this like the WoB on caffeine I'm not how to reconcile with other models, but I don't think I've seen any Feruchemist include lower tap limit thresholds into any of their decision making or having to create a gradation of stores for utility. It's mostly store now, tap when you need it. Sure, I can't think of a time that a Feruchemist tried to do a lower tap, but then if you're a Feruchemist and you keep having to keep pace with Mistings, Mistborn, Inquisitors, and Koloss, you pretty much have to tap with high compression to survive the constant high power available to Allomancy and Hemalurgy.

Yeah, a Feruchemist is highly encouraged to Tap at a higher rate in order to keep up with others' powers. I personally don't think that them not Tapping at a lower rate than what they Stored at is an indication that they can't do it, because realistically there would be very little reason to do it in most cases, because essentially, Tapping to quintuple your physical speed for 10 seconds is probably going to be more beneficial in most circumstances (especially a fight) than having 1/10 extra speed for an hour.

Plus, you know, Feruchemy's whole deal is about control and Tapping rate, so not being able to choose an exact rate at which you Tap just doesn't seem intuitive.

[alder24]

18 hours ago, Duxredux said:

As I think about it, I'm not happy with "you don't store memories in percentages, you just store it and it's gone from your mind.", as that still doesn't explain to me what difference that makes. Now if there's simply a difference between physical, cognitive, and spiritual attribute storage methods, that I'm okay with.

Because it doesn't really make any sense to store "50% of your memory." What does it mean? It's too arbitrary. Storing all of it makes sense and we've only seen this with Copperminds. You decide which parts of your memories to store. 

18 hours ago, Duxredux said:

A situation that I don't think has come up yet in the books that I can think of but seems like an obvious scenario: What happens if a Metalmind is cut or corroded? Are the memories in a Coppermind stored in contiguous chunks (i.e. if you were to cut Sazed's bracers in half you're more likely to get complete books up until the break) or if it's fluid will you basically get random chunks of mostly meaningless data?

We have the answer:

Spoiler

Questioner

If a coppermind was to be split in half, would the contents of it be destroyed? Or would there be, in the two separate halves, <of different contents?>?

Brandon Sanderson

You should err on the side of being destroyed, though not permanently, is what I would say on that. There are ways to approach it that wouldn't, but generally if you're ruining a metalmind, the Investiture will stay in it, and if you know what you're doing you can make use of that, but in most cases, it's not gonna fare well.

DragonCon 2019 (Aug. 29, 2019)

I imagine a Coppermind working like a hard drive - your memory is fragmented and fitted into empty axi. They can be stored all around the metalmind, or in one place close together. 

18 hours ago, Duxredux said:

Metalminds can be filled to a maximum capacity, is that capacity based on total Investiture or is it based on storage time like you can store 200 hours of attribute per 100 grams of metal, regardless of the percent you were storing each hour? It's probably the first, but if it's based on runtime then your Metalminds basically have the same issue as old hard drives that had to defragment.

Investiture per the amount of metal. 200h of 10% is less investiture than 200h of 80%. 

18 hours ago, Duxredux said:

If Wax has only stored 10 seconds where he's storing 10% of his maximum weight while the majority of his storage is 30%, what happens if he taps 10% for longer than 10 seconds? This is more or less the Steelrunner example, you were discussing with @Trusk'our, but a look at the actual mechanics when in use. This is way less intuitive in use than you would think. The solution is of course to simply store at lower capacities, so it makes it a weird and not particularly difficult limitation to get around.

I believe he would either stop tapping or start tapping 30%. 

18 hours ago, Duxredux said:

If a Firesoul Ferring ends up in a normally lethal fire and stores heat to survive does this mean they can't tap that section of storage without risking catching everything around them on fire because they can't regulate the output below a threshold? 

Good question. No idea. 

18 hours ago, Duxredux said:

Future Sentry Ferring chugs coffee to store Wakefulness. Based on WoBs, some of the jittery caffeine effects are retained on tapping. If they have 10 hours of regular sleep, and then the equivalent of 2 cups of coffee in stored Wakefulness, do they have control over which store they are tapping? Do they just tap until BAM jitters? Can they intentionally draw across multiple storages so that they basically average out the caffeine with the regular sleep?

Those two things give you a bit different kind of Wakefulness, you would have control with a proper intent. If you just want to stay awake, you tap what you can, if you want to use your sleep to stay awake, you won't tap coffee Wakefulness. It's more similar to storing senses in tin - it's possible you have to even store them separately.

18 hours ago, Duxredux said:

This is what I mean that there's ramifications for this limitation of Feruchemy that basically hasn't come up as far as I know. You see, I too read the books and WoBs along with the current mechanics as they are understood and this is what I see as some of the complications for what you propose when I think of use cases. Some of this like the WoB on caffeine I'm not how to reconcile with other models, but I don't think I've seen any Feruchemist include lower tap limit thresholds into any of their decision making or having to create a gradation of stores for utility. It's mostly store now, tap when you need it. Sure, I can't think of a time that a Feruchemist tried to do a lower tap, but then if you're a Feruchemist and you keep having to keep pace with Mistings, Mistborn, Inquisitors, and Koloss, you pretty much have to tap with high compression to survive the constant high power available to Allomancy and Hemalurgy.

I agree, there are certain ramifications for this idea that I haven't thought about, but there are also ramifications for the opposite, If you can tap at rates lower than you stored, then this is no different than compressing an attribute to higher rates. If compressing requires you to use up investiture, then decompressing would require this as well. There would have to be a loss associated with decompression to lower rates. 

Edited March 5, 2024 by alder24