king of nowhere Posted March 26, 2014 Report Share Posted March 26, 2014 Here is something that has been bugging me for a while. Allomantic metals run out pretty fast. a bead of pewter (we can say in the order of magnitude of one gram? probably the game is more detailed) runs out in ten minutes. More if you flare. tin is slow burning, but spook needed a sensible amount of it, and sometimes he burned it all when sleeping. When kelsier and vin did the pewter drag, they had their backpacks filled with pewter dust. In allomancy, running out of metals is an issue. On the other hand, someone with access to both allomancy and feruchemy is apparently able to compound with negligible amounts of material. miles is tapping gold all the time, and is burning gold to refill his metalminds. yet he's never concerned with running out of metal, despite gold being not exactly easy to come by in large amounts. he's probably able to use much less than one gram per day, if he could afford it before he became a criminal. Even more extremme the case of atium and aging. Brandon said that a single bead of atium is worth several decades of youth. that despite atium burning really fast in its allomantic use. So, is there a reason for compounded metals burning so slowly (except for the fact that so far only villains used them, and it would be anticlimatic to have the hero win cause the villain run out of metal)? And do we know exactly how slowly they burn? Is there any relation to how fast the regular metal burn (from atium I'd say no, but still)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurkistan he/him Posted March 26, 2014 Report Share Posted March 26, 2014 What makes you think they burn slowly, rather than Compounding just yielding absurd amounts of power in large bursts? Recall that Compounders aren't burning constantly: They burn one metalmind, then store all the excess in another. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swimmingly he/him Posted March 26, 2014 Report Share Posted March 26, 2014 I'd say it's just cause Compounding is insanely efficient. Feruchemy deals with multipliers of human-level power. Allomancy is a gateway into the power of a Shard itself. Just because normal allomantic gateways are small, weak, and inefficient, the feruchemical ones, which probably have to be basically perfect in order to shuffle power back and forth without loss, don't have to be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Observer Posted March 26, 2014 Report Share Posted March 26, 2014 Yeah, Miles would just have to shove a bunch of health into a gold bead, enough to fill it, and then burn it to receive stupid amounts of health in one enormous burst. He'd quickly stash all the extra health in his metalminds, rinsing and repeating. He still needs gold to keep going, but after about five beads he probably has enough to survive being shot a couple times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Hoodie Mistborn he/him Posted March 26, 2014 Report Share Posted March 26, 2014 What makes you think they burn slowly, rather than Compounding just yielding absurd amounts of power in large bursts? Recall that Compounders aren't burning constantly: They burn one metalmind, then store all the excess in another. Or multiple others! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king of nowhere Posted March 26, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 26, 2014 Yeah, Miles would just have to shove a bunch of health into a gold bead, enough to fill it, and then burn it to receive stupid amounts of health in one enormous burst. He'd quickly stash all the extra health in his metalminds, rinsing and repeating. He still needs gold to keep going, but after about five beads he probably has enough to survive being shot a couple times. Yes, I know. except that being shot a couple times is nothing to him. if one gram of gold was enough to heal a couple of shooting, then miles would need to burn several grams of gold every day. Cause miles is tapping his goldminds all the time. So, he either have a gold mine for himself, or it only take a small amount off gold to burn in order to fill a metalmind. I'd say swimmingly theory is the most likely Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurkistan he/him Posted March 27, 2014 Report Share Posted March 27, 2014 Yes, I know. except that being shot a couple times is nothing to him. if one gram of gold was enough to heal a couple of shooting, then miles would need to burn several grams of gold every day. Cause miles is tapping his goldminds all the time. So, he either have a gold mine for himself, or it only take a small amount off gold to burn in order to fill a metalmind. And/or Miles usually only taps a bit of extra Health most of the time, and turns the spigot when violence is afoot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocHoliday he/him Posted April 6, 2014 Report Share Posted April 6, 2014 I've always been curious as to how individualized the metal being compounded has to be. I mean can Miles just swallow some gold dust and go to work? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cstryon he/him Posted April 8, 2014 Report Share Posted April 8, 2014 I've always been curious as to how individualized the metal being compounded has to be. I mean can Miles just swallow some gold dust and go to work? AAt the end of AoL he was being executed, they took his metal minds. But the first couple of shots he healed. I would assume this is because he swallowed gold dust/pieces and had stored "stupid" amounts of health in them incase he had been separated from his external minds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Satsuoni he/him Posted April 8, 2014 Report Share Posted April 8, 2014 IIRC, Miles was complaining about constant need to get more gold in his early life, but I may be mistaken. Also, we have no idea how fast does gold burn Allomantically (I think? too few people burned it to tell for sure. It may be like tin). There is also the point that speed of burn may not matter in the end - we don't know for sure, but in general, Compounding provides about 10x the power stored in the metalmind. IMO, that means total, so the size of the gold nugget you are burning only provides the upper size of the power you get once you burn it all, and is not dependent on burn speed. So, assuming one bead (full) is enough for one shooting in the stomach (fast heal), or shotgun to the head (slower heal), burning it would provide always about 10 shootings worth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MistLord he/him Posted April 9, 2014 Report Share Posted April 9, 2014 It was basically said that the funding from Mr. Suit was what kept Miles and his horrible expensive compounding going 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempus Posted April 9, 2014 Report Share Posted April 9, 2014 Is there any known correlation, incidentally, between burning speed and physical qualities (such as mass, density, melting point, conductivity, etc)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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