Another Compounding question

[17th Splinter he/him]

By my understanding, when you compound, you create a new metal that when burned, gives you feruchemical powers. So my question is, does the amount of attribute stored in a burned metalmind change the amount of power you get out? Could it be similar to a allomantic metal that is a little impure and gives less power, so a not very full metalmind when burned gives less power, or is it just that if any amount of attribute is stored then burned the output remains the same.

[RShara she/her]

When you store something in a metal mind, it takes up "space" in the metal mind.  So a metal mind can actually become full (but it takes a lot).  When you compound, you can burn the bits that you've stored in, until it's gone.  So a more full one will burn for longer, thus giving you more power.

[Calderis he/him]

Just to show that RShara has the right of it here, we have a pretty clear answer on this one. 

Quote

yurisses

If Miles stored a very tiny bit of health into a gold bead and then burned it, what would happen? Would he see gold shadows for a time and then obtain compounded health when reaching the charged part of the bead? Would the bead be evenly charged and deliver only health, no gold shadows, but at a very low rate since only little health was loaded in it? Would the bead be evenly charged and deliver only health, but at a standard rate the user would always get when compounding?

Brandon Sanderson

He'd hack the system to deliver health for a short time instead of doing what it was supposed to do, but only until the small portion of gold invested with his investiture ran out.

source

 

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

So, you burn the part invested with the attribute, but theoretically, you could reinvest that into the metal you're burning and create a feedback loop to very quickly fill the bead you're burning to the max.

I would argue that, in most situations, how invested the metal is when you start compounding doesn't really matter, but it is an interesting nuance.