Radiant soulcasting...?

[Xabben]

According to early books in the series, it is clear that one of the limitations for soulcasting fabrials is that they often break gems due to the fast extraction of stormlight needed by the transformation process. However, radiant soulcaster don't really need gems for soulcasting, so... Isn't this basically a infinite food glitch? As long as they have access to stormlight, they should be able to create food (and other materials) without any real drawback or physical degradation...

[Frustration]

Yes, they actually do that in RoW with the various Lightweavers making food on their journey.

 

I honestly don't know why Brandon made such a big deal about using the oathgates as farmland. They can just make all the food they want. I suppose spices and other things would be nice to have, but not strictly speaking neccesary.

[Ascended Grubberfly He/Him]

36 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Yes, they actually do that in RoW with the various Lightweavers making food on their journey.

 

I honestly don't know why Brandon made such a big deal about using the oathgates as farmland. They can just make all the food they want. I suppose spices and other things would be nice to have, but not strictly speaking neccesary.

31 minutes ago, Xabben said:

For me, this is a BIG problem. It means that Radiants have infinite resources when they are in Urithiru, as the Sibling automatically recharges their stormlight and, therefore, there is no limitation for what they can create...

But is food their best use? Why waste your soldiers and important individuals getting rid of human waste and feeding an entire city.

Plus, Radiants can become Soulcasting Savants, they are just slightly more protected because of the bond. But that does not mean they are immune to it.

[Xabben]

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

Yes, they actually do that in RoW with the various Lightweavers making food on their journey.

 

I honestly don't know why Brandon made such a big deal about using the oathgates as farmland. They can just make all the food they want. I suppose spices and other things would be nice to have, but not strictly speaking neccesary.

For me, this is a BIG problem. It means that Radiants have infinite resources when they are in Urithiru, as the Sibling automatically recharges their stormlight and, therefore, there is no limitation for what they can create...

Moreover, in WaT, they say multiple times that "they cannot lose the Shattered Plains because they need to harvest gems for growing food". This makes no sense if soulcasting does not require gems...

Edited June 27 by Xabben

[Mystfall He/Him]

We actually do have some sort of an explanation. *sort of

There’s not a lot of soulcasters.

Out of the Elsecallers it’s just Jasnah, and while I’m pretty sure we only saw less than 20 Lightweavers. Based on Shallans comments on how she was glad the Lightweavers stayed small, I’m 90% sure that the Unseen Court consists of all the Lightweavers at the time.

And said soulcasters were almost always busy doing something else. The strategic value of the maps, and their illusions does mean you can’t have them always soulcasting. There are a lot of other ways to use a Lightweaver.

Now, if they did do a rotation of always having a radiant or two soulcasting, I don’t think they could get infinite food. Soulcasting takes effort from the radiant, and they need to take breaks. Also, the bigger something is, the harder to soulcast. Basically, even if they had all the light weavers and soulcasters on it, I don’t think they’d be able to keep up with the food demand of Urithiru.

And finally. Y’all. They had access to Towerlight for less than 10 days. And they had a war to fight. I highly doubt infinite food glitches were on their mind. 

[Xabben]

19 minutes ago, Myst said:

We actually do have some sort of an explanation. *sort of

There’s not a lot of soulcasters.

Out of the Elsecallers it’s just Jasnah, and while I’m pretty sure we only saw less than 20 Lightweavers. Based on Shallans comments on how she was glad the Lightweavers stayed small, I’m 90% sure that the Unseen Court consists of all the Lightweavers at the time.

And said soulcasters were almost always busy doing something else. The strategic value of the maps, and their illusions does mean you can’t have them always soulcasting. There are a lot of other ways to use a Lightweaver.

Now, if they did do a rotation of always having a radiant or two soulcasting, I don’t think they could get infinite food. Soulcasting takes effort from the radiant, and they need to take breaks. Also, the bigger something is, the harder to soulcast. Basically, even if they had all the light weavers and soulcasters on it, I don’t think they’d be able to keep up with the food demand of Urithiru.

And finally. Y’all. They had access to Towerlight for less than 10 days. And they had a war to fight. I highly doubt infinite food glitches were on their mind. 

This is a good explanation, but does not address the reason why some characters (I think that one of them is Sebarial) mention the relevance of harvesting emeralds to create food... I think that, once you have a good amount of Radiants that are able to soulcast, the importance of gemstones would diminish greatly.

[Mystfall He/Him]

5 minutes ago, Xabben said:

This is a good explanation, but does not address the reason why some characters (I think that one of them is Sebarial) mention the relevance of harvesting emeralds to create food... I think that, once you have a good amount of Radiants that are able to soulcast, the importance of gemstones would diminish greatly.

I feel like I answered that, the soulcasters they had wouldn’t have been enough, so they still needed the gemstones to grow more food.

Yes, once they have enough Lightweavers they would. But the thing is that they didn’t at that time. 

[Xabben]

4 minutes ago, Myst said:

I feel like I answered that, the soulcasters they had wouldn’t have been enough, so they still needed the gemstones to grow more food.

Yes, once they have enough Lightweavers they would. But the thing is that they didn’t at that time. 

I have just reread chapter 23 of WaT, and notice that Sebarial literally says that Radiants also need gems to soulcast, and that they can also break them. So I think that settles it. I would quote the incumbent segment, but I don't really know how to do it...