Zinc Compounding

[AirsickAviar he/him]

I've been thinking a bit about various metals compounded we haven't seen. But mental speed (zinc), compounded to have a person be able to think 100s of times faster than a normal person, on all the time to the point of Savantism even and still compounding... I feel this is like a walking supercomputer, perhaps masterminding the criminal underworld and politics these select few people in Scadrial society, I feel it. But I'm also trying to get a grasp of these superintellects. How much faster are they thinking that is sustainable in burning rates? 

[Riino He/Him]

5 hours ago, AirsickAviar said:

I've been thinking a bit about various metals compounded we haven't seen. But mental speed (zinc), compounded to have a person be able to think 100s of times faster than a normal person, on all the time to the point of Savantism even and still compounding... I feel this is like a walking supercomputer, perhaps masterminding the criminal underworld and politics these select few people in Scadrial society, I feel it. But I'm also trying to get a grasp of these superintellects. How much faster are they thinking that is sustainable in burning rates? 

I feel this definitely could have been used in the Set, but it does seem overpowered. Maybe this is something that we will see more of in Era 3, although it would have a similar feel to Ethan trying to destroy the Entity, and struggling because it can just predict him too well

[isabigfish]

Zinc Feruchemy is documented to to make the user rapidly hungry, essentially the thinking takes the same amount of chemical energy from your body as normal. So I think if you were to compound zinc you would be in real danger of malnutrition or even hypoglycemic fits/death.

Although if you also found a way to simultaneously compound bendalloy you could work around this barrier and approach levels where you could fit as much thinking into a fraction of a second as you want.

I imagine from the user's perspective it would be akin to freezing time while they think, not being able to move during the frozen time, but being able to spend as much 'time' from their perspective as they want to consider things before returning their thinking speed to normal, which would have their perspective of time also return to normal. But it is also entirely possible that Brandon decides it is more of a passive benefit, like when someone burns Atium they instinctively no how to use the information the allomancy provides to their brain and can act on instinct. If it follows that pattern it would be like the user just instinctively knows the answers to all sorts of problems that would usually require a great deal of thought.

[Riino He/Him]

1 hour ago, isabigfish said:

So I think if you were to compound zinc you would be in real danger of malnutrition or even hypoglycemic fits/death.

Good Point, But mental speed would allow you to comprehend difficult problems quickly, and so you wouldn't need to compound for long at all.

1 hour ago, isabigfish said:

Although if you also found a way to simultaneously compound bendalloy you could work around this barrier and approach levels where you could fit as much thinking into a fraction of a second as you want.

The issue with this, though, is that I would take the normal length of time, excluding the mental speed enhancement, for you to think this, the bendalloy wouldn't actually speed your thinking up for you, only how fast you think compared to other people's perception of time.

 

[isabigfish]

Compounding bendalloy is to provide the nutrition to overcome the hunger drawback, nothing to do with the speed of thinking, that effect entirely comes from zinc.

Also worth noting that the amount of hunger is most likely going to correspond to the amount of thinking, not the amount of time spent tapping zinc. So compounding and thinking 100 times faster would make you hungrier at 100 times the rate, whereas tapping zinc for only 10 times the thinking speed would likewise multiply hunger rate by 10. Essentially getting a concentrated thought burst is unlikely to circumvent any of the hunger or potential hypoglycemia risks.

Edited May 6, 2025 by isabigfish

[AirsickAviar he/him]

@isabigfishI wonder if a full ferchemist or someone with the right spikes could get around this by tapping gold healing, or does that work on hunger? 

[isabigfish]

@AirsickAviar Gold healing can heal the damage done to your body by starvation to keep you alive, but it would be much more painful for you, and less efficient than tapping stored nutrients from a bendalloy metalmind. To use gold you are essentially letting your cells die then growing new ones, whereas bendalloy is just feeding them to keep them alive. You would also still probably need to have matching Allomancy to be able to compound to keep up with the amount of starvation generated from compounding your zinc.

[AirsickAviar he/him]

@isabigfishI feel this then would still give rise to my thoughts of an underworld in which certain masterminds are being either controlled or controlling here as people in the shadows, those rare ones. I'd imagine any sinister group on scadrial who even halfway understands spikes would only need like 4 spikes to potentially have a superhuman AI type mastermind to help draft plans. There really isn't that much powers in the way here, and the potential upsides are so valuable.

 

Because it's not just mental speed as I thought. I did some searching for your metabolism references, and I'll finish there later, but this quote from Brandon Sanderson, is wow:

Quote

 

Alteroden: With [Feruchemical] zinc, you get mental speed. How is that any different from [Feruchemical] steel, except without [physical] speed?

Brandon Sanderson: I think of the mental speed actually turning you into... Let's say you sped up your body, and you wanted to figure out some really complex equations.

Alteroden: So it lets you have intuitive leaps.

Brandon Sanderson: Right. It basically turns you into Ken Jennings. That's how I imagine it.

Kurkistan: So it's not like bullet time?

Brandon Sanderson: No... It'll bullet time a little bit, it certainly will, because you're thinking faster than everyone else, but it has applications beyond bullet timing. Bullet time is really--

Kurkistan: That’s steel’s thing?

Brandon Sanderson: That’s kind of steel's thing. They kind of overlap on that one, because the steel thing... But yeah. It's more like "I think fast, but my reaction speed is not sped up".

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

 

If this is any way true, this is how I definitely see the shadow world behind scadrial playing out in the very long term. Too big of a mental advantage not to use. 

[Trusk'our he/him]

Quote

Because it's not just mental speed as I thought. I did some searching for your metabolism references, and I'll finish there later, but this quote from Brandon Sanderson, is wow:

If this is any way true, this is how I definitely see the shadow world behind scadrial playing out in the very long term. Too big of a mental advantage not to use. 

@AirsickAviar, I started up a thread here (F-zinc uses and questions) that dives into the user's experience with zinc and what it can actually do for you.

My personal takeaway from the discussion was that zinc Feruchemy primarily focuses on increasing one's intuitive ability to understand and calculate the world's workings, though this shouldn't do much to change the actual solution you dream up. In other words, it changes time and effort to understand something, but doesn't strictly alter your intelligence (though some outlying feats such as Sazed predicting where a projectile will land are also boosted, so perhaps this isn't quite accurate).

I think this is still massively powerful though, as someone with extra mental speed (from Compounding or blank Metalminds) can not only leverage what they currently know more quickly and readily than a non-Sparker, but they could also learn and add to their knowledge with greater ease too.