Mistborn Metal Crazy Combinations

[First of the Tide He/him]

In a WoB, Brandon retconned and said that allomancers were burning an alloy of electrum and atium, right? So, god metals can be alloyed with regular metals to get new results. I'm gonna assume that this applies to all of the base metals with all god metals. And, due to the existence of harmony, we know that the combination of multiple shards into one makes a new god metal. There are 2^16 ways to combine shards. (including Adonalsium and the Zero-Shard Set) Each of those ways has 17 unique allomantic metals (base god metal + 16 alloys)(except the Zero-Shard Set, which has no base metal), so I'm getting ((2^16)*17)-1, or a little over a million unique allomantic metals, which is crazy to me.

 

Also, I know Treamayne's gonna tell me to go make an introduction post, but ima just say it here: I've read all the Cosmere.

Edited October 14, 2025 by First of the Tide

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

54 minutes ago, First of the Tide said:

In a WoB, Brandon retconned and said that allomancers were burning an alloy of electrum and atium, right? So, god metals can be alloyed with regular metals to get new results. I'm gonna assume that this applies to all of the base metals with all god metals. And, due to the existence of harmony, we know that the combination of multiple shards into one makes a new god metal. There are 2^16 ways to combine shards. (including Adonalsium and the Zero-Shard Set) Each of those ways has 17 unique allomantic metals (base god metal + 16 alloys)(except the Zero-Shard Set, which has no base metal), so I'm getting ((2^16)*17)-1, or a little over a million unique allomantic metals, which is crazy to me.

 

Also, I know Treamayne's gonna tell me to go make an introduction post, but ima just say it here: I've read all the Cosmere.

There is another thread that goes into WAYYYYYY more detail, but the TL;DR is that: di, tri, and more shards are complicated, and adonalsium could be shattered into different shards

all in all, there are basically infinite (not sure what the exact number was, but the ado thing was infinite) different allomantically-viable metals

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

2 hours ago, First of the Tide said:

In a WoB, Brandon retconned and said that allomancers were burning an alloy of electrum and atium, right? So, god metals can be alloyed with regular metals to get new results. I'm gonna assume that this applies to all of the base metals with all god metals. And, due to the existence of harmony, we know that the combination of multiple shards into one makes a new god metal. There are 2^16 ways to combine shards. (including Adonalsium and the Zero-Shard Set) Each of those ways has 17 unique allomantic metals (base god metal + 16 alloys)(except the Zero-Shard Set, which has no base metal), so I'm getting ((2^16)*17)-1, or a little over a million unique allomantic metals, which is crazy to me.

 

Also, I know Treamayne's gonna tell me to go make an introduction post, but ima just say it here: I've read all the Cosmere.

I did some calculations before, using all possible Shard combos. I don't have the number right now, so I'm going to re-calculate step-by-step

First, we must take 2^16 for all possible Shard combinations, including Ado and no Shards. This is 65536 possible Shards, 99% of which will never exist. 

Then, 65536 * 17 = 1114112, then minus 1 for the no Shards not having a god metal, and you get 1,114,111 Allomantic metals.

So yeah, over a billion metals.

[Treamayne]

8 hours ago, First of the Tide said:

Also, I know Treamayne's gonna tell me to go make an introduction post, but ima just say it here: I've read all the Cosmere.

The reason I post that is so it's in one easily found location. But it is not a requirement - though you may be asked on future questions (unless you plan to add this line to every post or in your signature)

8 hours ago, First of the Tide said:

In a WoB, Brandon retconned and said that allomancers were burning an alloy of electrum and atium, right? So, god metals can be alloyed with regular metals to get new results. I'm gonna assume that this applies to all of the base metals with all god metals. And, due to the existence of harmony, we know that the combination of multiple shards into one makes a new god metal. There are 2^16 ways to combine shards. (including Adonalsium and the Zero-Shard Set) Each of those ways has 17 unique allomantic metals (base god metal + 16 alloys)(except the Zero-Shard Set, which has no base metal), so I'm getting ((2^16)*17)-1, or a little over a million unique allomantic metals, which is crazy to me.

Please see the Ultimate Metal Count thread.