Compounding

[NameIess]

8 hours ago, Frustration said:

Burn time is equivalent to the amount of Investiture drawn out.

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Brandon Sanderson

The longest lasting of the Allomantic metals is actually copper, which is used by Smokers to hide Allomancy. Tin is second, however. Steel and Iron are actually rather quick, but since they're generally used in bursts, it's hard to notice. Both brass and zinc are medium, as is bronze. Pewter burns the fastest of the basic eight, though atium and gold both burn faster than it does.

In my mind, it's related to how much 'work' the metal has to do. That's why pewter, steel, and iron burn so quickly. A lot of weight and power is getting thrown around, while copper only has to do something simple. However, I never really set any of these things hard-fast.

And, only atium is really all that rare. Because of the value of the metals, the noble houses expended a lot of resources finding and exploiting mines to produce the metals. This resulted in a slightly higher value for most of them as opposed to our world, but not really noticeably so, because Allomancers really don't need that much metal. Even fast burning metals, like pewter, are generally only swallowed in very small amounts. (i.e. A small bit goes a long way.)

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/291/#e7820

 

Oversleep (paraphrased)

Allomantic strength. There are stronger Allomancers, they can burn metals faster, right?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, they can also squeeze more power out of it. They can use it more efficiently.

Oversleep (paraphrased)

So there is some loss of power along the way? How do savants work into that?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Savants can use it way more efficiently. They are more Connected to the Shard. Closer to Spiritual Realm.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/120/#e1901

 

 

 

 

The reason leeching takes longer is that it has to burn through the Investiture before it can destroy the metal.

I am aware that burn time is related to Investiture, but am proposing that a more invested piece of metal will be more “efficient” than an uninvested piece of metal. And Brandon said that it would take longer for the invested metal to be burned off because invested metals were harder to affect, not because the chromium must burn through the Investiture.

[Tglassy]

12 hours ago, StanLemon said:

The thing with compounding is that, going further on Frustration says, you just need to fill a small amount to get a lot.

There are a few important details, metals burn at a speed relative to how much it is doing. The reason Pewter burns so fast for example, is that it is doing so much. It makes you stronger, faster, tougher, heal faster, etc. 5 small beads could be flaired for an hour or so according to Vin and that's flairing so burning would last even longer. So if you instead put Strength into it and burned it, it would likely burn even longer than that as it's only one vector that A-Pewter gives. Why is this important? Because a minute or two is all the time you should need to fill those beads with Strength to Compound.

Because Compounding simply is funneling the Investiture that a Compounder pulling from the SR and shaping it by the stored Investiture in the Metalmind, it just needs enough Investiture to recognize it as the stored trait rather than the metal itself. 

Back to our Pewter example, let's say you have a small bead of metal that you stored a minute's worth of strength in. You can Compound said bead for an hour. By the end of that hour, you have 60 times the amount of Strength you had stored originally. Now let's say you stored each of those 60 minutes in a bead where each bead has one minute's worth. Spend 10 hours a day burning and storing those stores and in 6 days you now 60 hours worth of Strength. All while only having to weaken yourself for one single minute. And as we have seen from Sazed, Wax, and Wayne, it doesn't really take much attention to store a trait.

I mean, that does sound multiplicative.  Sure, maybe it's not "oh, you get 10x as much", but you still get more out of it than you put in.  And as long as you're getting more out of it then you put in, then you can, effectively, gain an unlimited amount.  It's not actually unlimited, as it still relies on a resource, but you EFFECTIVELY gain unlimited, as you have no worry of ever running out any time soon.  

So you get your small bead of a minute's worth of strength, burning it for an hour, giving you an hour's worth of strenth, then shunting that into 60 smaller beats, and burning each of those, then you STILL get an effectively unlimited supply of Strength, because you then burn all 60 of those beads and put them all into one large Pewter Bracer.  That's 60 hours of double strength, and since it's all in a metalmind, you can pull it all out in an instant, or just stay double strength for 60 hours straight.  Yes, 60 hrs isn't a lot, but instead of putting it in a Bracer, just do it again, and you've got 1200 hours of double strength.  Do it again and you've got 78,000 hours of double strength.  If it doesn't all fit in one bracer, just grab as many as you need.

So it might not be striaight multiplicative, but in effect, it is.  You put a little of the attribute in, and you compound that attribute over and over and have an effectively uneanding supply. 

 

Edit: And Pewter isn't nearly as expensives as Gold, and Miles did this in book.  He never stopped tapping gold.  He still needed to sleep i believe, but other than that, he didn't even need to breath.  He was constantly reinvigorated moment to moment.  Never ending supply of health, which means he managed to get the gold to do that, and to be honest, he probably didn't need THAT much of it.  He made his metal minds, and compounded to fill them all to the brim.  When he started getting low, he'd have to compound again, but depending on how much more he got each time, he may not have needed THAT much gold to pull it off.  With Pewter, it would be much less expensive.  

Edit 2: I have a question.  If storing an attribute in a metalmind makes you burn that metalmind as if it had that attribute, then what about when you store MORE in the metalmind?

Ok, so you have two metalminds.  One you store 1 unit of Healing.  In the other you store 2 units of Healing.  Then you burn them.  How much healing do you get?  Each metalmind being the same size.  

I would imagine that you would burn each for the same length of time, but you'd get more healing out of the second than the first.  Or, the second takes twice as long to burn cause it's invested, thus giving you twice as much over a longer period.  

But if it's just "oh, you change the charge to a ferchemical one so you're now burning feruchemical strength", that just doesn't compute since you can store more attribute in a metalmind.  

Edited December 28, 2022 by Tglassy

[Frustration he/him]

32 minutes ago, Tglassy said:

I mean, that does sound multiplicative.  Sure, maybe it's not "oh, you get 10x as much", but you still get more out of it than you put in.  And as long as you're getting more out of it then you put in, then you can, effectively, gain an unlimited amount.  It's not actually unlimited, as it still relies on a resource, but you EFFECTIVELY gain unlimited, as you have no worry of ever running out any time soon.  

So you get your small bead of a minute's worth of strength, burning it for an hour, giving you an hour's worth of strenth, then shunting that into 60 smaller beats, and burning each of those, then you STILL get an effectively unlimited supply of Strength, because you then burn all 60 of those beads and put them all into one large Pewter Bracer.  That's 60 hours of double strength, and since it's all in a metalmind, you can pull it all out in an instant, or just stay double strength for 60 hours straight.  Yes, 60 hrs isn't a lot, but instead of putting it in a Bracer, just do it again, and you've got 1200 hours of double strength.  Do it again and you've got 78,000 hours of double strength.  If it doesn't all fit in one bracer, just grab as many as you need.

So it might not be striaight multiplicative, but in effect, it is.  You put a little of the attribute in, and you compound that attribute over and over and have an effectively uneanding supply. 

 

Edit: And Pewter isn't nearly as expensives as Gold, and Miles did this in book.  He never stopped tapping gold.  He still needed to sleep i believe, but other than that, he didn't even need to breath.  He was constantly reinvigorated moment to moment.  Never ending supply of health, which means he managed to get the gold to do that, and to be honest, he probably didn't need THAT much of it.  He made his metal minds, and compounded to fill them all to the brim.  When he started getting low, he'd have to compound again, but depending on how much more he got each time, he may not have needed THAT much gold to pull it off.  With Pewter, it would be much less expensive.  

...

Worrying that a compounder would run out of attribute is like worrying that a coinshot would run out of pushes. The only difference is that a compounder can store up their ability and use it all at once.

2 hours ago, UnfortunatelyNamed said:

I am aware that burn time is related to Investiture, but am proposing that a more invested piece of metal will be more “efficient” than an uninvested piece of metal.

When allomancers burn awakened metal the only different thing that happens is they get their breath back, the metal isn't burned more efficiently

Spoiler

Questioner (paraphrased)

What would happen if Allomancer was also an Awakener and Awakened metal he'd burn?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

If he did that, he’d get Allomantic power and also get back the Breaths used in Awakening the metal.

Footnote: Supposedly it was around half an hour into the signing line; has not been found on the record although we may have started it after it was asked already; follow-up to this

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/120/#e8055

 

 

 

 

[NameIess]

4 minutes ago, Frustration said:

When allomancers burn awakened metal the only different thing that happens is they get their breath back, the metal isn't burned more efficiently

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Aside from that WoB being the most unreliably sourced that I’ve seen, it also confirms that a Mistborn wouldn’t compound breaths, so it’s not comparable to burning metalminds. 
I’ll admit that there’s not a ton of evidence for my theory, but it just seems odd to me that there’d be no correlation between the amount of attribute stored in a metalmind and the amount you get from compounding, at least once you saturate all of the metal with Investiture:

Spoiler

yurisses

If Miles stored a very tiny bit of health into a gold bead and then burned it, what would happen? Would he see goldshadows 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.

Worldbuilders AMA (Dec. 4, 2015)

 

[IlstrawberrySeed]

On 12/24/2022 at 4:32 AM, Treamayne said:

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yurisses

If Miles stored a very tiny bit of health into a gold bead and then burned it, what would happen? Would he see goldshadows 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.

This seems to have been brushed over, but heavily implies that the IU put in is directly related to the IU out, because the metal will run out of fuerochemical charge and revert to releasing allomantic power. I’d assume the rate of compounding has to do with how much IU/metal it normally puts out, but as pointed out previously, Brandon thinks of it as speed of burning is related to the IU required to do it’s thing, so it is unlikely to do a lot.

[Tglassy]

Can someone please explain to me how, if a compounder only gets out what he puts in the metalmind, did Miles have the amount of Health he had stored up?  And the Lord Ruler?  Or the fact that it's called Compounding.  Compouning, as in with Interest, where you put a single deposit into the bank and over years the interest compounds on itself to grow to massive levels.  If a Compounder can't get more out of their metal than any other feruchemist, then why is it shown to be so much different in the books?

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

This seems to have been brushed over, but heavily implies that the IU put in is directly related to the IU out, because the metal will run out of fuerochemical charge and revert to releasing allomantic power. I’d assume the rate of compounding has to do with how much IU/metal it normally puts out, but as pointed out previously, Brandon thinks of it as speed of burning is related to the IU required to do it’s thing, so it is unlikely to do a lot.

2 minutes ago, Tglassy said:

Can someone please explain to me how, if a compounder only gets out what he puts in the metalmind, did Miles have the amount of Health he had stored up?  And the Lord Ruler?  Or the fact that it's called Compounding.  Compouning, as in with Interest, where you put a single deposit into the bank and over years the interest compounds on itself to grow to massive levels.  If a Compounder can't get more out of their metal than any other feruchemist, then why is it shown to be so much different in the books?

@Frustration and I have slightly different interpretations (and we could both be close, or both be way off base - there just isn't enough information to nitpick the details yet), but here's my primer (using the notional IU):

• Given (notional) 1 gram of Gold can Allomantically burn for 60 seconds
  • Further, lets say that it releases 10 IU of investiture (manifested as Gold Shadows), or 1 IU every 6 seconds
• Given (notional) a 1 gram Goldmind (maybe an earring) can hold 5 IU of Health when full.
• Because that 1 gram of gold is Feruchemically charged, when a compounder burns it, the Investiture Key is to release Feruchemical power
  •  
• One possibility is that the amount of Feruchemical charge doesn't matter - that 1 gram Goldmind will always produce 10 IU of health
  • This could account for the origin of the "10x" referenced by both Sazed and Wax - if a 1 IU metalmind created 10 IU of feruchemical power
  • If this is true, then power could be wasted if the metalmind was "full" because you would have "spent" 5 IU to make 10 - only 2x return
• Another possibility is that the amount of charge does matter - but then the question becomes how
  • It may be exponential (as considered above) - in that Feruchemical charge times ten dived by the burn time (a 5 IU metalmind burns as 50 IU of feruchemical power dived by the number of seconds to burn the full metalmind)
    • This would then be bounded by how much can be stored in a metalmind that is still small enough to swallow and burn - knowing that we have WoBs that state that if a metalmind is broken after filling then power is lost (and with some metalminds - like Copper - possibly all of it is lost). So you may not be able to simply fill a huge bracer and break it into a few hundred chinks to burn later
  • It may be proportional - where a full metalmind would release an exponent charge, but a less-than-full metal mind releases less than 10x change
    • This would account for the WoBs (above) that imply the amount of charge matters - and that's why TLR was running out of time where he could continue to stay alive by compounding age (").
    • Example: 2 IU of charge in a 5IU metalmind is 40% full - so that would burn at 4x (40% of 10x) or release 8IU of feruchemical charge divided bu the seconds to burn.

It's also entirely possible that more than one option is possible - because Command and Intent may change how the compounding is expressed for the individual. The main problem is there is an inconstancy in the Words of Brandon implying different "solutions."

 

[Tglassy]

But in all those situations, you get more IU's of the feruchemical power than you put in.  Which is why it's called Compounding.  You get more than you put in, and compound on itself to make more.  

And TLR had issues compounding atium because he was getting older.  If you are 40, and you store 20 years, making yourself 60 for a day, then you could then make yourself 20 for a day.  But he can compound, giving near limitless age...except that he keeps aging. 

So in 20 years, he is now 60, and needs to use 40 years worth of stored age to look 20.  Now fast forward 240 years.  He's now 300.  He now has to use up 280 years worth of storage to look 20.   And he would have to do so constantly.  He actually could never stop Compounding, even when storing age, because he could only afford to make himself around 90.  Basically, he just slowed his tapping Youth enough to fill a new metalmind to consume.   

By the end of the The Final Empire, he was 1000 years old.  He had to use up 980 years worth of storage just to appear 20 years old.  And Apparently, that was getting hard to do.  Because it's not just 980 years worth, it's CONSTANTLY 980 years worth.  Every second, he'd have to spend enough energy to make himself look 20.  For a normal Atium Ferring, he'd have to make himself 1960 years old to store enough Youth to look 20, and he'd have to do that for an equal amount of time as he wants to spend being 20.  But TLR can Compound, so he doesn't need to do that. 

The other metals don't have this issue, because you don't steadily grow weaker over time.  But you do age.  So storing Age has diminishing returns that other attributes just won't have.  

Edit: I'd assume that even with unlimited Atium, he wouldn't be able to compound enough eventually.  There wouldn't be an Atium mind that could hold the charge.  But apparently, his two bracers were enough to hold 980 years worth, if only for a few minutes at a time.  

Edited December 29, 2022 by Tglassy

[Werewolff Studios he/him]

3 hours ago, Tglassy said:

Can someone please explain to me how, if a compounder only gets out what he puts in the metalmind, did Miles have the amount of Health he had stored up?  And the Lord Ruler?  Or the fact that it's called Compounding.  Compouning, as in with Interest, where you put a single deposit into the bank and over years the interest compounds on itself to grow to massive levels.  If a Compounder can't get more out of their metal than any other feruchemist, then why is it shown to be so much different in the books?

I put this in other thread, but it probably belongs here too.

They do get more out of their metal, as they are utilizing the power within the metal itself as fuel for their metalmind.

For arguments sake, let's look at an Ironmind ring weighing 10 grams. Let's say it can store 10kg worth of mass within it, but if you were to burn 10 grams worth of Iron, you could Allomantically Pull 100kg worth of mass (random number as an example) towards you during its burn duration (ie, you could Pull a 10kg object toward you 20 times).

A Compounder stores 10kg of weight in this ring, meaning the amount of potential power within is 110kg. They then Allomantically burn the ironmind and, instead of getting the Allomantic effect, they gain the Feruchemical attribute. So, they get 110kg of mass to draw upon.

They take all of this mass and store it in another ironmind ring, which now has a potential power of 210kg. The Compounder then burns that ironmind, gaining 310kg of mass to draw upon. Repeat and repeat until your ironminds are full to bursting with mass to draw upon, not fully infinite but more than you could ever realistically use. 

[IlstrawberrySeed]

Treamane, my understanding based on what I quoted is that the charge will run out while compounding, such that the metal size doesn’t matter other than maximum.

[Tglassy]

19 hours ago, Werewolff Studios said:

I put this in other thread, but it probably belongs here too.

They do get more out of their metal, as they are utilizing the power within the metal itself as fuel for their metalmind.

For arguments sake, let's look at an Ironmind ring weighing 10 grams. Let's say it can store 10kg worth of mass within it, but if you were to burn 10 grams worth of Iron, you could Allomantically Pull 100kg worth of mass (random number as an example) towards you during its burn duration (ie, you could Pull a 10kg object toward you 20 times).

A Compounder stores 10kg of weight in this ring, meaning the amount of potential power within is 110kg. They then Allomantically burn the ironmind and, instead of getting the Allomantic effect, they gain the Feruchemical attribute. So, they get 110kg of mass to draw upon.

They take all of this mass and store it in another ironmind ring, which now has a potential power of 210kg. The Compounder then burns that ironmind, gaining 310kg of mass to draw upon. Repeat and repeat until your ironminds are full to bursting with mass to draw upon, not fully infinite but more than you could ever realistically use. 

Right.  Ok.  See, that does make sense.  You get more than you put into it.  Which means that if you do it enough, you have a near limitless supply.  Or at the very least, you can compound enough so that you can draw from it constantly without worry of ever running out.  AKA, Miles.  If Miles were a Pewter compounder, he would do the same thing with physical strength, and just always be strong, and could increase it at any point if that strength wasn't enough in the moment.  Miles didn't seem to worry about getting blown up by grenads, or being shot over and over.  He just barreled on through.  So I don't see a Pewter Compounder, or Steel Compounder, ever really running out, either.  Particularly since Pewter and Steel are much cheaper than Gold.  

[Werewolff Studios he/him]

3 minutes ago, Tglassy said:

Right.  Ok.  See, that does make sense.  You get more than you put into it.  Which means that if you do it enough, you have a near limitless supply.  Or at the very least, you can compound enough so that you can draw from it constantly without worry of ever running out.  AKA, Miles.  If Miles were a Pewter compounder, he would do the same thing with physical strength, and just always be strong, and could increase it at any point if that strength wasn't enough in the moment.  Miles didn't seem to worry about getting blown up by grenads, or being shot over and over.  He just barreled on through.  So I don't see a Pewter Compounder, or Steel Compounder, ever really running out, either.  Particularly since Pewter and Steel are much cheaper than Gold.  

Yeah, that's basically it. You're mainly limited by the size and number of the metalminds themselves, which is why it's never technically infinite. The only way you could fully deplete yourself is if you have no metal left to burn ie, you Allomantically burn away all the metalminds bolted to and through you. I suppose you could tap all of the stored attribute at once, but the sheer amount of Investiture compression and ability overload would be more likely to kill you. 

[Tglassy]

I say limitless or infinite, but it's really "Effectively" limitless or infinite.  You are limited by your metalminds, their storage, and your access to metals.  

But in the short term, in say, a single battle against a powerful opponent, you may as well have infinite.  You aren't going to run out.  It's just not possible.  You could magnify tremendously and pull out a huge amount of power, but you aren't going to run out.  Deplete it a lot, maybe, but not completely.  And then it wouldn't take long to fill it back up again.  

[Treamayne]

8 hours ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Treamayne, my understanding based on what I quoted is that the charge will run out while compounding, such that the metal size doesn’t matter other than maximum.

But you implied that there would be gold left without a feruchemical charge that would burn allomantically. That's not the case**, since the charge is dispersed throughout the metal (think of putting a few drops of food coloring in water - it will diffuse throughout the volume - not just a portion of the volume) so when the gold runs out, it's because it was a small amount of gold and it all burned away. That WoB is one of the reasons I think the amount of compounding is at least related to how full the metalmind has been stored. If you recal Vin's Gold Experience in TFE (and Miles in AoL) - gold burns rather quickly (almost as fast as Atium). I'm not sure if the full metal mind would burn slower (as previously proposed) or just offer a larger exponent of released health (as also previously proposed).

There are WoBs that discuss how a broken metalmind still has investiture in all of the pieces - but in some cases (like a Coppermind) it might damage or destroy the storage.

Spoiler

The_Vikachu

If someone broke a coppermind, could the feruchemist still access a fragment of the information in it from a chunk of the coppermind, or would he require that the whole thing be reformed to access any of its storage?

Brandon Sanderson

The information would be fragmented.

Questioner

If a coppermind was to be split in half, would the contents of it be destroyed? Or would there be, in the two separate halves, <of different contents?>?

Brandon Sanderson

You should err on the side of being destroyed, though not permanently, is what I would say on that. There are ways to approach it that wouldn't, but generally if you're ruining a metalmind, the Investiture will stay in it, and if you know what you're doing you can make use of that, but in most cases, it's not gonna fare well.

 

[StanLemon]

4 hours ago, Treamayne said:

If you recal Vin's Gold Experience in TFE (and Miles in AoL) - gold burns rather quickly (almost as fast as Atium). I'm not sure if the full metal mind would burn slower (as previously proposed) or just offer a larger exponent of released health (as also previously proposed).

It's not the metal itself that determines burning speed, but what the Investiture is doing. It seems A-Gold is very Investiture intensive which causes it to burn so fast. Considering health is just one of the benefits A-Pewter gives, it would likely burn a great deal slower than Pewter. 

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

The longest lasting of the Allomantic metals is actually copper, which is used by Smokers to hide Allomancy. Tin is second, however. Steel and Iron are actually rather quick, but since they're generally used in bursts, it's hard to notice. Both brass and zinc are medium, as is bronze. Pewter burns the fastest of the basic eight, though atium and gold both burn faster than it does.

In my mind, it's related to how much 'work' the metal has to do. That's why pewter, steel, and iron burn so quickly. A lot of weight and power is getting thrown around, while copper only has to do something simple. However, I never really set any of these things hard-fast.

And, only atium is really all that rare. Because of the value of the metals, the noble houses expended a lot of resources finding and exploiting mines to produce the metals. This resulted in a slightly higher value for most of them as opposed to our world, but not really noticeably so, because Allomancers really don't need that much metal. Even fast burning metals, like pewter, are generally only swallowed in very small amounts. (i.e. A small bit goes a long way.)

TWG Posts (July 31, 2006)

The strength of the Allomancer probably goes more into how much of the trait is gained from burning the metal than the amount of the trait that is put into the metal. 

[Treamayne]

4 hours ago, StanLemon said:

It's not the metal itself that determines burning speed, but what the Investiture is doing. It seems A-Gold is very Investiture intensive which causes it to burn so fast. Considering health is just one of the benefits A-Pewter gives, it would likely burn a great deal slower than Pewter.

Thanks for the WoB.  It confirms my point (in different words: A-Gold is fast burning because peeking into the SR is investiture heavy)

It might be worth confirming with Brandon in a Q&A if, for example, A-Pewter and C-Pewter burn at the same rate.

However, I think Pewter is a poor comparison. Vin's cuts and broken ribs took 3 months to heal with A-Pewter (still faster than an unaided person, but nowhere near Miles/Wayne).

I'd imagine the investiture/burn rate for C-Gold is more akin to (SA)

Spoiler

Stormlight healing. Where we have seen it use so much so fast that it ran out before the healing was complete

You'd get a lot of health out of that short time, but I doubt it would burn slower than A-Gold. Unless the theory that how full the metalmind has been stored affects the rate of burning it allomantically.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

I think of it as tapping the metal mind while you burn it. It is draining the charge from the metal at a rate that drains it before completely burned. The charge is dispersed, but it getting sucked out to “fill” the parts being burned.
 

Think about it like this: you have 2 gases in a balloon. 1 of them is magnetic. You can either open the balloon, releasing both gases at a proportional rate, or you can use a magnet to pull more of the magnetic charge out. If there is regular gas, the magnetic gas’s will run out first.

We saw Vin do the first, and I’m proposing that compounders do the second. It definitely isn’t an exact comparison, nor is there a magnetic gas to my knowledge.

[StanLemon]

6 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Thanks for the WoB.  It confirms my point (in different words: A-Gold is fast burning because peeking into the SR is investiture heavy)

It might be worth confirming with Brandon in a Q&A if, for example, A-Pewter and C-Pewter burn at the same rate.

However, I think Pewter is a poor comparison. Vin's cuts and broken ribs took 3 months to heal with A-Pewter (still faster than an unaided person, but nowhere near Miles/Wayne).

I'd imagine the investiture/burn rate for C-Gold is more akin to (SA)

  Hide contents

Stormlight healing. Where we have seen it use so much so fast that it ran out before the healing was complete

You'd get a lot of health out of that short time, but I doubt it would burn slower than A-Gold. Unless the theory that how full the metalmind has been stored affects the rate of burning it allomantically.

It really depends on how much health/second a Compounder gets. What would help more is to ask Brandon is how much of a trait is gained while burning a Metalmind if it isn't being stored, that would give us our baseline.

[Tglassy]

I was doing a write up of how I thought compounding worked, but then I realized how difficult it would really be.  The reason can be shown in Pewter.

Let's say you store half your strength in Pewter for a day.  Now you have enough strength in that pewter to give you double strength for a day.  But what happens if you burn it?  How much strength does it grant?  And I'm not talking about how much can be put in a metalmind, but how strong do you get when you just burn it.  Burning isn't like Tapping.  Tapping the metal, you can pull it all out at once.  Burning is steady.  

So...would the amount of strength you receive by burning the metal be equal to what you recieved if you pulled all the strength out at once?  Only, instead of draining the metalmind from tapping, you can sustain that level of strength throughout the burn?  Or...oh, ok.  Example.

Let's say, to keep things simple a Pewter Bead that takes ten minutes to burn can hold twenty minutes of double strength, or 10 minutes of 4x Strength.  If Compounding was net neutral, then burning that bead would give you 10 mintues of 4x strength, just like Tapping it does.  You just have no control over the speed at which you burn (or less control).  

But Compounding isn't net neutral.  It's net Positive.  Which means you either gain MORE than 4x strength when burning the metalmind, or, if it takes longer to burn invested metals, you would gain that same 4x strength but over a longer period of time than you should.  Say, for 20 minutes, instead of 10.  You make the metal burn longer, but releasing the amount of energy as if it wasn't burning longer.  And the energy released would be the amount of total strength you put in, plus however much Allomancy adds.  

This is hurting my head, but yeah, I think this is how it works.  I think a compounded metalmind takes longer to burn because it's invested, but you still gain the same amount of energy as if it wasn't burning longer.  So a 10 minute Pewter Bead with 20 minutes of double strength stored would release 4x strength for 20 minutes instead of 10.  Maybe it's not that specific, maybe it's more (itll burn for an hour), or less (it'll burn for 15 minutes), but regardless, you're getting more than you put in. 

And in this way, burning a larger metalmind would give you more energy.  The Allomancy ADDS energy to it, but you're also drawing the energy you put in as well.  It really just depends on how much extra energy you get.  

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

On 12/30/2022 at 6:35 PM, Tglassy said:

I was doing a write up of how I thought compounding worked, but then I realized how difficult it would really be.  The reason can be shown in Pewter.

Let's say you store half your strength in Pewter for a day.  Now you have enough strength in that pewter to give you double strength for a day.  But what happens if you burn it?  How much strength does it grant?  And I'm not talking about how much can be put in a metalmind, but how strong do you get when you just burn it.  Burning isn't like Tapping.  Tapping the metal, you can pull it all out at once.  Burning is steady.  

So...would the amount of strength you receive by burning the metal be equal to what you recieved if you pulled all the strength out at once?  Only, instead of draining the metalmind from tapping, you can sustain that level of strength throughout the burn?  Or...oh, ok.  Example.

Let's say, to keep things simple a Pewter Bead that takes ten minutes to burn can hold twenty minutes of double strength, or 10 minutes of 4x Strength.  If Compounding was net neutral, then burning that bead would give you 10 mintues of 4x strength, just like Tapping it does.  You just have no control over the speed at which you burn (or less control).  

But Compounding isn't net neutral.  It's net Positive.  Which means you either gain MORE than 4x strength when burning the metalmind, or, if it takes longer to burn invested metals, you would gain that same 4x strength but over a longer period of time than you should.  Say, for 20 minutes, instead of 10.  You make the metal burn longer, but releasing the amount of energy as if it wasn't burning longer.  And the energy released would be the amount of total strength you put in, plus however much Allomancy adds.  

This is hurting my head, but yeah, I think this is how it works.  I think a compounded metalmind takes longer to burn because it's invested, but you still gain the same amount of energy as if it wasn't burning longer.  So a 10 minute Pewter Bead with 20 minutes of double strength stored would release 4x strength for 20 minutes instead of 10.  Maybe it's not that specific, maybe it's more (itll burn for an hour), or less (it'll burn for 15 minutes), but regardless, you're getting more than you put in. 

And in this way, burning a larger metalmind would give you more energy.  The Allomancy ADDS energy to it, but you're also drawing the energy you put in as well.  It really just depends on how much extra energy you get.  

I need to look in this forum more often as my post in the general was completely blind of this existing.  

I definately think the size of your metalmind plays the biggest role in compounding.  I think the investiture distributes itself evenly no matter the size of the metalmind and the best most efficient way to compound would be by burning densely stored metalminds.  You would gain more of the trait per second of burnrate so long as that allomantic metal shaving/ bead is packed as densely as it can.