Duralumin's affect on Compounding

AonSoo · April 10, 2025

How would burning Duralumin affect compounding?

Trusk'our · April 10, 2025

1 hour ago, AonSoo said:

How would burning Duralumin affect compounding?

It can be hazardous if not used carefully, but it would speed up the process to be nearly instantaneous.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/34-arcanum-unbounded-seattle-signing/#e5901

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.

You could probably use a duralumin Allomancy-granting Hemalurgic spike or a Nicroburst to greatly speed up the rate of replenishing Metalminds for a Compounder.

Hope this was helpful!

AonSoo · April 10, 2025

Thanks! I was just talking with a friend about ways you could kill gold compounders and if nuking them would work or if they could survive a nuke by Duralumin burning the gold compounding. So if a gold compounder with Duralumin(Alom) and Zinc(Ferr). They used Zinc to be accurate when they used their gold, compounded gold and burn Duralumin, it would heal you enough at each moment to survive the blast, but would be over instantly. So probably not work, but I guess it depends on how close to instantaneous it would be.

Trusk'our · April 10, 2025

9 minutes ago, AonSoo said:

Thanks! I was just talking with a friend about ways you could kill gold compounders and if nuking them would work or if they could survive a nuke by Duralumin burning the gold compounding. So if a gold compounder with Duralumin(Alom) and Zinc(Ferr). They used Zinc to be accurate when they used their gold, compounded gold and burn Duralumin, it would heal you enough at each moment to survive the blast, but would be over instantly. So probably not work, but I guess it depends on how close to instantaneous it would be.

I think an aluminum bullet would get the job done more easily. I guess it depends on where you hit, as their Feruchemy could still keep them alive if not shot in the brain- aluminum would prevent healing in the local area as long as it's loged in place, but healing should keep the body alive regardless.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/219-words-of-radiance-philadelphia-signing/#e6365

Kurkistan

What would happen if you shot a thug with an aluminum bullet or stabbed him with an aluminum knife?

Brandon Sanderson

Ah, that's a good question. The wound would not be able to heal around the aluminum, but once the aluminum came out and was gone from the system, they would be okay.

Kurkistan

Wait, is that a Bloodmaker, not a Thug?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, you're talking about Thugs?

It would work similarly, but it really wouldn't have a huge effect on them.

Kurkistan

Alright, because Peter was implying that there was some weird aluminum interaction with Thugs.

Brandon Sanderson

What was he thinking of...?

There is some weird interaction but...

Kurkistan

In the wedding scene, Wax thinks they would have aluminum bullets to deal with Thugs, and I was like, "Oh, that's a typo." And Peter was like, "Oh no it's not..."

Brandon Sanderson

No, no. That would just be-- it's like I said: healing it until the bullet is gone, it's just the same as Bloodmakers.

Leeching might also work, but it would take time depending on their metal/Investiture stores:

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/101-conquest-46/#e881

Kaymyth (paraphrased)

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

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

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.

Nuking them is probably unavoidably lethal. We haven't seen what happens with a supercharged healing yet, but it would be hard to survive the force of nuclear bombardment.

therunner · April 11, 2025

Nuking would be certainly lethal, since the metalminds themselves would simply vaporize from the heat.

No metalminds, no healing.

JustQuestin2004 · April 15, 2025

So, I once saw a theory on the effect Allomantic Duralumin might have on Feruchemy.

So, a big part of Feruchemy is that there's diminshing returns the more you tap from your metalminds, you can't store speed for a minute then be 60x faster for a second.

This has been explained as some of the Investiture in the Metalmind being used up to compress the rest, so I have to wonder.

If a Feruchemist tapped their Metalmind at the same rate as they filled it originally, let's say 50% for example, then burned Duralumin, would that get around the Diminishing Feruchemical Returns rule? Since you'd be kind of hacking the system with the 'Compressing Investiture' factor coming from your Allomancy rather than your Feruchemy. Granted it would still be very uncontrollable, but it would make the big bursts of tapping more efficient, getting more bang with less time wasted.

In my head it makes sense, but I want to know what you guys think.

Trusk'our · April 15, 2025

1 hour ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

So, I once saw a theory on the effect Allomantic Duralumin might have on Feruchemy.

So, a big part of Feruchemy is that there's diminshing returns the more you tap from your metalminds, you can't store speed for a minute then be 60x faster for a second.

This has been explained as some of the Investiture in the Metalmind being used up to compress the rest, so I have to wonder.

If a Feruchemist tapped their Metalmind at the same rate as they filled it originally, let's say 50% for example, then burned Duralumin, would that get around the Diminishing Feruchemical Returns rule? Since you'd be kind of hacking the system with the 'Compressing Investiture' factor coming from your Allomancy rather than your Feruchemy. Granted it would still be very uncontrollable, but it would make the big bursts of tapping more efficient, getting more bang with less time wasted.

In my head it makes sense, but I want to know what you guys think.

I feel like we need more information to say anything conclusively, but my Fortune tells me it probably doesn't work that way.

I think the main culprit for diminishing returns may be because your Spiritweb's natural state fights against the influx of Investiture from the tapped Metalmind. Rashek needed more and more youth to combat age for this very reason.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/188-general-reddit-2015/#e3923

Doom-Slayer

So how do the exact mechanics of Feruchemy in relation to Compounding work?

This confusion is primarily around how [the Lord Ruler] gets his near infinite age.

Okay. So first off, I understand the concept of how they work. Feruchemy is net zero, Allomancy is net positive, combine them and you end with a net positive Feruchemy ability.

So how Feruchemy normally works... you take say weight, store half your normal weight and then you can access it whenever you want. So you (originally X weight) are taking A weight, storing it, and then you are at (X-A) weight, with access to A. So we have a metalmind that store magnitude with the efficiency of how its received based on how quickly or slowly it is drawn upon.

All the metalminds except atium seem to act this way. Atium seems to work as storing magnitude/time rather than just magnitude. The way I understand it is that say a 30 year old person becomes 50 years old for 1 day, this would give access to 20 years difference for a 1 day period.

The Lord Ruler then exploits this by gaining access to say 20 years difference over 10 days (magnification by Compounding) which he then slowly feeds into himself to lower his age.

Why this difference? I'm assuming its to maintain a neutral "body age" because with just magnitude a person could permanently make themselves younger by Compounding.

With just magnitude of "20 years of youth" being stored, if the Lord Ruler magnified it, he could turn it into "200 years of youth" and then he would never need the constant stream off youth (and wouldn't have died without the bracelets)

Hope this makes sense.

Brandon Sanderson

All right, so there are a few things you have to understand about cosmere magics to grok all of this.

First, is that magics can be hacked together. You'll see more of this in the future of the cosmere, but an early one is the hack here--where you're essentially powering Feruchemy with Allomancy. (A little more complex than that, but it seems like you get the idea.)

The piece you're missing is the nature of a person's Spiritual aspect. This is similar to a Platonic idea--the idea that there's a perfect version of everyone somewhere. It's a mix of their connections to places, people, and times with raw Investiture. The soul, you might say.

(Note that over time, a person's perception of themselves shapes their Cognitive aspect as well, and the Cognitive aspect can interfere with the Spiritual aspect trying to make the Physical aspect repair itself.) Healing in the cosmere often works by aligning your Physical self with your Spiritual self--making the Physical regrow. More powerful forms of Investiture can repair the soul as well.

However, your age is part of your Connection to places, people, and times. Your soul "knows" things, like where you were born, what Investiture you are aligned with, and--yes--how old you are. When you're healing yourself, you're restoring yourself to a perfect state--when you're done, everything is good. When you're changing your age, however, you are transforming yourself to something unnatural. Against what your soul understands to be true.

So the Spiritual aspect will push for a restoration to the way you should be. With this Compounding hack, you're not changing connection; it's a purely Physical Realm change.

This dichotomy cannot remain for long. And the greater the disparity, the more pressure the spirit will exert. Ten or twenty years won't matter much. A thousand will matter a lot. So the only way to use Compounding to change your age is to store up all this extra youth in a metalmind, then be constantly tapping it to counteract the soul's attempt to restore you to how you should be.

Yes, all of this means there are FAR more efficient means of counteracting aging than the one used by the Lord Ruler. It's a hack, and not meant to be terribly efficient. Eventually, he wouldn't have been able to maintain himself this way at all. Changing Connection (or even involving ones Cognitive Aspect a little more) would have been far more efficient, though actively more difficult.

Though this is the point where I ping [Peter Ahlstrom] and get him to double-check all this. Once in a while, my fingers still type the wrong term in places. (See silvereye vs tineye.)

So perhaps this loss is only present in attributes hard-coded in your Spiritweb to begin with, and things like Allomantic Bronze don't have such a disadvantage.

If this is the case, I don't think that upping the attribute with duralumin Allomancy is any different from standard tapping- you're still going to get a lot of power because it's compressed into a small window, but you'll end up losing a lot still.

Treamayne · April 15, 2025

1 hour ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

So, I once saw a theory on the effect Allomantic Duralumin might have on Feruchemy.

So, a big part of Feruchemy is that there's diminshing returns the more you tap from your metalminds, you can't store speed for a minute then be 60x faster for a second.

This has been explained as some of the Investiture in the Metalmind being used up to compress the rest, so I have to wonder.

If a Feruchemist tapped their Metalmind at the same rate as they filled it originally, let's say 50% for example, then burned Duralumin, would that get around the Diminishing Feruchemical Returns rule? Since you'd be kind of hacking the system with the 'Compressing Investiture' factor coming from your Allomancy rather than your Feruchemy. Granted it would still be very uncontrollable, but it would make the big bursts of tapping more efficient, getting more bang with less time wasted.

In my head it makes sense, but I want to know what you guys think.

20 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I feel like we need more information to say anything conclusively, but my Fortune tells me it probably doesn't work that way.

I think the main culprit for diminishing returns may be because your Spiritweb's natural state fights against the influx of Investiture from the tapped Metalmind. Rashek needed more and more youth to combat age for this very reason.

Hide contents

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/188-general-reddit-2015/#e3923

Doom-Slayer

So how do the exact mechanics of Feruchemy in relation to Compounding work?

This confusion is primarily around how [the Lord Ruler] gets his near infinite age.

Okay. So first off, I understand the concept of how they work. Feruchemy is net zero, Allomancy is net positive, combine them and you end with a net positive Feruchemy ability.

So how Feruchemy normally works... you take say weight, store half your normal weight and then you can access it whenever you want. So you (originally X weight) are taking A weight, storing it, and then you are at (X-A) weight, with access to A. So we have a metalmind that store magnitude with the efficiency of how its received based on how quickly or slowly it is drawn upon.

All the metalminds except atium seem to act this way. Atium seems to work as storing magnitude/time rather than just magnitude. The way I understand it is that say a 30 year old person becomes 50 years old for 1 day, this would give access to 20 years difference for a 1 day period.

The Lord Ruler then exploits this by gaining access to say 20 years difference over 10 days (magnification by Compounding) which he then slowly feeds into himself to lower his age.

Why this difference? I'm assuming its to maintain a neutral "body age" because with just magnitude a person could permanently make themselves younger by Compounding.

With just magnitude of "20 years of youth" being stored, if the Lord Ruler magnified it, he could turn it into "200 years of youth" and then he would never need the constant stream off youth (and wouldn't have died without the bracelets)

Hope this makes sense.

Brandon Sanderson

All right, so there are a few things you have to understand about cosmere magics to grok all of this.

First, is that magics can be hacked together. You'll see more of this in the future of the cosmere, but an early one is the hack here--where you're essentially powering Feruchemy with Allomancy. (A little more complex than that, but it seems like you get the idea.)

The piece you're missing is the nature of a person's Spiritual aspect. This is similar to a Platonic idea--the idea that there's a perfect version of everyone somewhere. It's a mix of their connections to places, people, and times with raw Investiture. The soul, you might say.

(Note that over time, a person's perception of themselves shapes their Cognitive aspect as well, and the Cognitive aspect can interfere with the Spiritual aspect trying to make the Physical aspect repair itself.) Healing in the cosmere often works by aligning your Physical self with your Spiritual self--making the Physical regrow. More powerful forms of Investiture can repair the soul as well.

However, your age is part of your Connection to places, people, and times. Your soul "knows" things, like where you were born, what Investiture you are aligned with, and--yes--how old you are. When you're healing yourself, you're restoring yourself to a perfect state--when you're done, everything is good. When you're changing your age, however, you are transforming yourself to something unnatural. Against what your soul understands to be true.

So the Spiritual aspect will push for a restoration to the way you should be. With this Compounding hack, you're not changing connection; it's a purely Physical Realm change.

This dichotomy cannot remain for long. And the greater the disparity, the more pressure the spirit will exert. Ten or twenty years won't matter much. A thousand will matter a lot. So the only way to use Compounding to change your age is to store up all this extra youth in a metalmind, then be constantly tapping it to counteract the soul's attempt to restore you to how you should be.

Yes, all of this means there are FAR more efficient means of counteracting aging than the one used by the Lord Ruler. It's a hack, and not meant to be terribly efficient. Eventually, he wouldn't have been able to maintain himself this way at all. Changing Connection (or even involving ones Cognitive Aspect a little more) would have been far more efficient, though actively more difficult.

Though this is the point where I ping [Peter Ahlstrom] and get him to double-check all this. Once in a while, my fingers still type the wrong term in places. (See silvereye vs tineye.)

So perhaps this loss is only present in attributes hard-coded in your Spiritweb to begin with, and things like Allomantic Bronze don't have such a disadvantage.

If this is the case, I don't think that upping the attribute with duralumin Allomancy is any different from standard tapping- you're still going to get a lot of power because it's compressed into a small window, but you'll end up losing a lot still.

Compounding itself is already bypassing the Compression loss of increased tapping - by definition, Compounding is using external investiture to power the stored trait. If you store 1 minute of 75% speed, then tap it you get one minute of 175% speed. If you, instead, Burn that metalmind you get an amount of "speed-focused Investiture" equal to 10x (roughly) the amount stored - either 1 minute of 750% speed or 10 Minutes of 175% speed (ikely based on Intent while Compounding). Normally, this would not be translated directly into action - because most compounders store the trait they are Compounding in other metalminds. Duralumin would have almost no bearing on that process - since the burn output is still going directly to storage input. Trying to Duralumin enhance the Compounding process directly into action is likely to be even more fatal than just Duralumin was for Vin as a normal Mistborn (please see this post where I collected all the quotes I could find where Duralumin would have killed Vin if she did not also burn Pewter simultaneously to survive).

WoBs:

Spoiler

TFE Epilogue and Annotations:

Quote

“However, if the Feruchemist were also an Allomancer, he might be able to burn his own metal storages, releasing the energy within them tenfold. Mistress Vin tried to burn some of my metals earlier, but couldn’t access the power. However, if you were able to make up the Feruchemical storages yourself, then burn them for the extra power… ”

Compounding

The discussion of Feruchemy and Allomancy working together is one of the most complicated magical explanations I’ve ever done, and I hope it works. One of the fun things about my books are the magic, and it’s really tough to walk the line between making magic that has technically interesting aspects without making it either a) too complicated or b) feel like I’m just making it up as I go along.

I was trying to get across here an unexpected consequence of mixing the two magics. Like how certain chemicals react oddly when mixed, or even like two computer programs running on the same computer can cause odd reactions, letting someone use Feruchemy and Allomancy together makes for some very strange mixtures of the powers.

(I intend to get into this later.)

Of course, what this also does is un-deify the Lord Ruler somewhat, which is intentional. I don’t want it to undermine the accomplishment the characters have made–what they did was difficult and they have achieved a great victory.

Quote

<edited for length and relevance>

Questioner

So you do have to be burning one the whole time? Sounds good, good to know. So you could just infinitely fill it, basically? As you burn, you just use it to fill it and it just gets-- and that's where that comes from?

Brandon Sanderson

Yep. You are burning a metalmind that you've already filled, right? That's the key there. You fill a metalmind, then you burn that, and what that does is it keys the metalmind to the Feruchemy instead. Which normally no one can do because you could-

Questioner

You can't do both.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. But if you can do both, you fill a metalmind, you burn that metalmind. What comes out of it is Feruchemical power instead, and you then are filling the metalmind with more.

So Allomancy is fueled by the power of the Shard. So what you're doing is you're powering your Feruchemy with the power of the Shard, instead of your own body. Using their Investiture instead of yours. Which is very dangerous.

Idaho Falls signing (Dec. 29, 2018)

Quote

<edited for length and relevance>

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Open The Fridge Interview (Nov. 16, 2011)

Quote

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Feruchemy is about multipliers. The more the Lord Ruler aged, the less "multiplier" he could store in his metalmind. And the more he aged the more he would need to Compound to stay alive. There could exist an upper bound to the amount of time the Lord Ruler could survive off this trick.

Alloy of Law 17th Shard Q&A (Nov. 5, 2011)

Hope that helps

Edited April 15, 2025 by Treamayne
SPAG

JustQuestin2004 · April 16, 2025

8 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

I feel like we need more information to say anything conclusively, but my Fortune tells me it probably doesn't work that way.

I think the main culprit for diminishing returns may be because your Spiritweb's natural state fights against the influx of Investiture from the tapped Metalmind. Rashek needed more and more youth to combat age for this very reason.

Reveal hidden contents

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/188-general-reddit-2015/#e3923

Doom-Slayer

So how do the exact mechanics of Feruchemy in relation to Compounding work?

This confusion is primarily around how [the Lord Ruler] gets his near infinite age.

Okay. So first off, I understand the concept of how they work. Feruchemy is net zero, Allomancy is net positive, combine them and you end with a net positive Feruchemy ability.

So how Feruchemy normally works... you take say weight, store half your normal weight and then you can access it whenever you want. So you (originally X weight) are taking A weight, storing it, and then you are at (X-A) weight, with access to A. So we have a metalmind that store magnitude with the efficiency of how its received based on how quickly or slowly it is drawn upon.

All the metalminds except atium seem to act this way. Atium seems to work as storing magnitude/time rather than just magnitude. The way I understand it is that say a 30 year old person becomes 50 years old for 1 day, this would give access to 20 years difference for a 1 day period.

The Lord Ruler then exploits this by gaining access to say 20 years difference over 10 days (magnification by Compounding) which he then slowly feeds into himself to lower his age.

Why this difference? I'm assuming its to maintain a neutral "body age" because with just magnitude a person could permanently make themselves younger by Compounding.

With just magnitude of "20 years of youth" being stored, if the Lord Ruler magnified it, he could turn it into "200 years of youth" and then he would never need the constant stream off youth (and wouldn't have died without the bracelets)

Hope this makes sense.

Brandon Sanderson

All right, so there are a few things you have to understand about cosmere magics to grok all of this.

First, is that magics can be hacked together. You'll see more of this in the future of the cosmere, but an early one is the hack here--where you're essentially powering Feruchemy with Allomancy. (A little more complex than that, but it seems like you get the idea.)

The piece you're missing is the nature of a person's Spiritual aspect. This is similar to a Platonic idea--the idea that there's a perfect version of everyone somewhere. It's a mix of their connections to places, people, and times with raw Investiture. The soul, you might say.

(Note that over time, a person's perception of themselves shapes their Cognitive aspect as well, and the Cognitive aspect can interfere with the Spiritual aspect trying to make the Physical aspect repair itself.) Healing in the cosmere often works by aligning your Physical self with your Spiritual self--making the Physical regrow. More powerful forms of Investiture can repair the soul as well.

However, your age is part of your Connection to places, people, and times. Your soul "knows" things, like where you were born, what Investiture you are aligned with, and--yes--how old you are. When you're healing yourself, you're restoring yourself to a perfect state--when you're done, everything is good. When you're changing your age, however, you are transforming yourself to something unnatural. Against what your soul understands to be true.

So the Spiritual aspect will push for a restoration to the way you should be. With this Compounding hack, you're not changing connection; it's a purely Physical Realm change.

This dichotomy cannot remain for long. And the greater the disparity, the more pressure the spirit will exert. Ten or twenty years won't matter much. A thousand will matter a lot. So the only way to use Compounding to change your age is to store up all this extra youth in a metalmind, then be constantly tapping it to counteract the soul's attempt to restore you to how you should be.

Yes, all of this means there are FAR more efficient means of counteracting aging than the one used by the Lord Ruler. It's a hack, and not meant to be terribly efficient. Eventually, he wouldn't have been able to maintain himself this way at all. Changing Connection (or even involving ones Cognitive Aspect a little more) would have been far more efficient, though actively more difficult.

Though this is the point where I ping [Peter Ahlstrom] and get him to double-check all this. Once in a while, my fingers still type the wrong term in places. (See silvereye vs tineye.)

So perhaps this loss is only present in attributes hard-coded in your Spiritweb to begin with, and things like Allomantic Bronze don't have such a disadvantage.

If this is the case, I don't think that upping the attribute with duralumin Allomancy is any different from standard tapping- you're still going to get a lot of power because it's compressed into a small window, but you'll end up losing a lot still.

I'd be willing to argue that that's more about Rashek having less Youth to store as he gets older than anything else. Eventually he would have had too little to viably store and then he'd die.

I don't think we've had any evidence that the spirit itself fights against Feruchemical changes, since it's just an influx of power throughout the spirit that stops when one runs out, just the same as Allomancy, it's just coming from a different source. So, while you do make an interesting point, it's one I can't agree with.

8 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Compounding itself is already bypassing the Compression loss of increased tapping - by definition, Compounding is using external investiture to power the stored trait. If you store 1 minute of 75% speed, then tap it you get one minute of 175% speed. If you, instead, Burn that metalmind you get an amount of "speed-focused Investiture" equal to 10x (roughly) the amount stored - either 1 minute of 750% speed or 10 Minutes of 175% speed (ikely based on Intent while Compounding). Normally, this would not be translated directly into action - because most compounders store the trait they are Compounding in other metalminds. Duralumin would have almost no bearing on that process - since the burn output is still going directly to storage input. Trying to Duralumin enhance the Compounding process directly into action is likely to be even more fatal than just Duralumin was for Vin as a normal Mistborn (please see this post where I collected all the quotes I could find where Duralumin would have killed Vin if she did not also burn Pewter simultaneously to survive).

WoBs:

Reveal hidden contents

TFE Epilogue and Annotations:

Hope that helps

Yeah, using Duralumin on Compounding isn't really the best idea, not unless a Gnat was really good at controlling the bursts and was a Savant or something like that. Since too much of anything can be a bad thing. A burst of Infinite warmth? Set yourself on fire. A burst of Infinite Speed? Set yourself on fire with wind resistance friction. And so on.

I'm just thinking that maybe a regular Duralumin Gnat Twinborn might not be a useless combination. Since otherwise, they're just a regular Ferring with a little extra nothing on top.

therunner · April 16, 2025

4 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

I'd be willing to argue that that's more about Rashek having less Youth to store as he gets older than anything else. Eventually he would have had too little to viably store and then he'd die.

That wouldn't matter.
So long as Rashek has basically any amount of Youth to store, he can compound himself as much as he want (provided sufficient access to Atium).
E.g. even if he could store only 1 minute of Youth, he could compound it to a year worth of storage in just 6 compounding cycles (burn -> store). 1 second of stored Youth could be compounded to more than that in just 8 cycles.

Not to mention, so long as he has Atiummind with some storage, ha can simply compound that one.

The only reason he'd die is that even with Compounding he is unable to generate enough Investiture to overcome the diminishing returns.

Quote

I don't think we've had any evidence that the spirit itself fights against Feruchemical changes, since it's just an influx of power throughout the spirit that stops when one runs out, just the same as Allomancy, it's just coming from a different source. So, while you do make an interesting point, it's one I can't agree with.

Actually we do have evidence, there is literally a WoB on that:
It is specifically about Atium and youth, however the argument that spiritweb knows what it is supposed to be and is pushing against any change should hold for many attributes. Interestingly, it would suggest that F-Gold is exempt from this inefficiency (as it is just about returning body to this platonic ideal of how it should be).