Well of Ascension typo

[Triasmus]

I searched "typo" in the search and I didn't see any typo threads besides the alloy of law.

I was reading through WoA and it says this when Vin is testing duralumin for the first time.

Vin climbed into the chair, sat back, then took a pinch of the duralumin dust and swallowed it. She closed her eyes, and felt at her Allomantic reserves. The common eight were all there, well stocked. She didn't have any atium or gold, nor did she have either of their alloys. Even if she'd had atium, it was too precious to use except in an emergency—and the other three had only marginal usefulness.

And then in chapter 5 of HoA

The plate had been written by the Lord Ruler, of course. Or, at least, he'd ordered it written as it was. Each previous cache had also contained information, written in steel. In Urteau, for instance, she had learned about electrum. In the one to the east, they'd found a description of aluminum—though they'd already known about that metal.

I guess it could be passed off that they learned that electrum will counter atium when they "learned about electrum", but I still feel it should be fixed.

NOTE: It could already be fixed in a later version of the book. I don't know.

Edited April 5, 2012 by Lantern13

[Eric]

I'm not sure the first bold phrase is a mistake. She guessed from trying malatium that it wasn't gold's alloy, so even if she doesn't know what it is in WoA, she still knows she doesn't have it. As for the alloy of gold having marginal usefulness, I'd say she's either making an assumption or she feels that a new metal isn't useful until you figure out what it does. A first-person thought process would have been clearer, if I'm correct on that. Dunno where my books are, so I don't know if it was changed.

[Triasmus]

In the first quote the two bolds are meant to "connect" in your mind the implication that she knows what the alloy of gold is. To me the second quote makes it sound like they found out about gold's alloy from the cache, instead of finding out that gold's alloy is useful to combat atium from the cache.

[Odium's_Shard]

I really can't understand what the problem is. So, in the first quote she states that she has no Atium, nor Gold, nor either of their alloys. However, she doesn't know about electrum. But she knows that Gold must have an alloy. All metals do. After all, she was testing one at that moment. And, based off of her performance with the lord Ruler and the effectiveness of Malatium there, she is pretty certain that Gold's alloy must be crap, basically.

But then in the second quote, after having found the cache that talks about electrum, and its ability to counter atium, she has 'learned about electrum'. She did. Before she didn't know what it was. Now she does. Isn't that a 'learn'?

She learned both that it was gold's alloy and the counter to atium from the message left by TLR.

Can you explain the problem again if I didn't get it?

[Triasmus]

She said that gold's alloy has marginal usefulness. She has to know what it is before she can know how useful it is.

And I was just thinking, Electrum could be fairly useful. It shows your possible futures, so you could be looking at your futures and see one get stabbed and be like "well... that one got stabbed, so I'm not gonna act it out". It would be more useful with zinc feruchemy though, which wouldn't help Vin (if zinc is thought speed).

Edited April 5, 2012 by Lantern13

[Odium's_Shard]

Vin mentions that with Electrum, you don't get the mental boost necessary in order to choose the most useful path, like with Atium. Also, we have already said it may have been an assumption. It may not be a typo, but more of a slight inconsistency in the storyline. Very minor, any way you look at it.

[Triasmus]

meh... typo is close enough to inconsistency

a zinc metalmind would be make it a lot easier.

[CrazyRioter she/her]

that is so, being an electrum/zinc twinborn would be nearly as good as having atium, at least if you had enough mental speed stored before getting into a fight.

[Triasmus]

Well that's sad. In the twinborn combos thread electrum/zinc is in the OP.

and I managed to not see the "error in well of ascension" thread several threads down. I could have just posted this thread in there .

[Odium's_Shard]

Now where would be the fun in that?

[The Rooster he/him]

This may be Necro Posting but I think it should go here.  I am listening to the Audiobook of Well of Ascension for the first time and at the beginning of Chapter 41 Tindwyl says "Assuming that Alendi is that Author's book"  , when in my ebook the grammar is corrected to "book's author" does anyone know if this is a typo from the original hardcover or just a Michael Kramer flub .  It's surprising there aren't more audiobook flubs considering they probably read an entire huge novel over the course of a few days, MK is a real pro!