Does any of else struggles to understand what happens in Mistborn fights?

[Munazir]

I’m currently reading WoA and The Watcher and Vin are fighting for the first time at Keep Hasting and I’m struggling to keep up with all the iron pulling and steel pushing and how their weights factor into this.

Does any one else have this problem?

Do I not understand the magic system enough?

 

[alder24]

I read it recently again, and didn't have any problems, but I read it many times. At my first reading, I had some problems with following these quick action sequences. What's important to understand that it behaves like real life physics. Steel pushing and Iron pulling follows conservation of momentum. If allomancer and the metal have the same mass, they both have the same speed, if allomancer is much heavier, inertia prevents him from moving, and metal flies away. With this, it was much easier for me to understand.

[StormingTexan he/him]

I think I felt the same way when I initially read the books too. I will say in the next era the "Wax and Wayne" books something new is introduced in to the mechanics that make it easier to understand in my opinion. You may also try going back to HoA and re-read Kelsier's tutorials for Vin I think he explains a lot of this pretty well may help to have a refresher. 

[Thaidakar the Ghostblood he/him]

2 hours ago, StormingTexan said:

You may also try going back to HoA and re-read Kelsier's tutorials for Vin I think he explains a lot of this pretty well may help to have a refresher. 

I'm fairly certain you mean TFE

[Treamayne]

6 hours ago, Munazir said:

I’m currently reading WoA and The Watcher and Vin are fighting for the first time at Keep Hasting and I’m struggling to keep up with all the iron pulling and steel pushing and how their weights factor into this.

This Scene? WoA Ch 17:

Spoiler

Vin wasn’t certain if Zane purposely headed to Keep Hasting, or if she simply caught up to him there. Either way, the enormous structure loomed as Zane noticed her proximity and turned, throwing a handful of coins at her.

Vin Pushed against them tentatively. Sure enough, as soon as she touched them, Zane flared steel and Pushed harder.

<snip>

Disoriented, she hit the stone wall walk, tumbling amid her mistcloak until she came to a halt beside the wall’s stone railing.

She shook her head and flared tin, clearing her vision with a flash of pain and other senses. Surely Zane hadn’t fared better. He must have fallen as—

Zane hung a few feet away. He’d found a coin—Vin couldn’t fathom how—and was Pushing against it below him. However, he didn’t shoot away. He hovered above the wall top, just a few feet in the air, still in a half tumble from Vin’s kick.

Quote

Does any one else have this problem?

Do I not understand the magic system enough?

It can take a bit of practice visualizing the three-dimensional orchestration of the fight. On my first read through, I think I backed up and read this passage a second time (same with the fight with Shan in TFE) to make sure I was following the action. For me, it also helped to visualize the Keep:

Spoiler

Keep Hasting was one of the finest in the city. It had a large tower at the center—tall, imposing, wide—with a ballroom at the very top. It also had six smaller towers rising equidistant around the central structure, each one connected to it by a thick wall.

<snip>

She and Zane were sparring between a pair of the keep’s outer towers; there was an angled wall to either side of them, with the central tower just a short distance in front of them. They were fighting near the tip of an open-bottomed triangle of stone walls.

So, you may recall from TFE when Vin attended the Ball at Keep Hasting, the Keep has a hexagonal shape with a tower at each vertex and the Keep's tower is in the center. Walls run from the vertices to the center, rather than along the perimeter. The action takes place mostly near two tower walls and the three towers that form the points of the "open bottomed triangle."

Spoiler

 

Visualizing the structures really helped me to visualize the described action.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Treamayne
SPAG

[StormingTexan he/him]

14 hours ago, Thaidakar the Ghostblood said:

I'm fairly certain you mean TFE

You are correct!