What's metal compounding?

[Jehoiada he/him]

Sorry this May be a stupid question but I really don't know. I have read all the mistborn stuff, I guess I just missed it.

[Dunkum he/him]

14 minutes ago, Jehoiada said:

Sorry this May be a stupid question but I really don't know. I have read all the mistborn stuff, I guess I just missed it.

Compounding is when someone has both allomancy and ferruchemy for the same metal.  when that happens, they have the ability to burn their own metalmind.  When they do this, instead of getting the normal Allomantic power from that metal, they instead get the Ferruchemic power.  However because the power for Allomancy comes from outside of them, they can access more of the Ferruchemical power than they originally put in (about 10 times as much, in general).  They can then store this power back into a new metalmind, which they can also burn, essentially granting them access to infinite power.

for a concrete example, imagine a pewter compounder (both pewter allomancy and ferruchemy).  if thye store 50% of their strength for an hour, then normally they would be able to spend an hour at 150% strength later by tapping the metalmind.  Instead, if they burn that metalmind, and immediately store what they get into a new one, then their new metalmind will have 10 hours worth of 50% strength.  and if they repeat this, the new new metalmind will have 100 hours worth etc.

[Jehoiada he/him]

Ok gotcha thats how miles hundred life's did it right? Gold compounding 

Edited May 15, 2018 by Jehoiada

[Dunkum he/him]

1 minute ago, Jehoiada said:

Ok gotcha thats how miles hundred life's did it right? Gold compounding 

exactly.  he basically had access to near infinite ferruchemical health (I guess it would technically be limited based on how much gold he had access to, but it was still an enormous amount), which he could access by tapping or burning, depending on what he was doing and how much health he needed to get quickly.

[Jehoiada he/him]

Ok thanks, this helped alot.