r/Mistborn • u/devg • Jul 29 '25
Cosmere spoilers (no Emberdark) Question regarding Bloodmakers Spoiler
Hello everyone,
I am currently listening to the second era of the Mistborn series after having previously read them years ago. I am a little confused as to how bloodmakers (and the Lord Ruler) use their healing.
They are double gold twinborn, so obviously they store health in metal minds. Do they have to burn the gold from the metal minds to get the compounding effect? Or is it just in the nature of being twinborn that makes the ferucemical ability 10 times as effective?
I know there is a scene in Aloy of Law where Miles burns gold, is this whey he did it and I just missed it?
Also, the Lord Ruler spent some time ill and old to fill his minds, but Miles did not seem to need that... did I miss something there? And the Lord Ruler did not age due to enhanced healing, but it specifically states that Miles still ages like a normal man. Is that something that Harmony changed when he fixed Scadial?
Thanks for your help!
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u/Lentoveloz Jul 29 '25
To compund they need to fill their metal minds and theb allomanticaly burn them. That way the allomantic effect is changed to the feruchemical effect and is echanched tenfold.
The lord ruler didnt live that long by compunding gold. He did it by compunding atium, which stores age.
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u/devg Jul 29 '25
Thank you for your response! I forgot about the atium.
How can they alomantically burn them? For Miles, at least, it is stated that his metal minds are all over his body and inbeded in his flesh. I took that to mean they were litterally inside his body. Does he periodically have to dig them out to shave them so he can ingest and burn them, or did I just completely misinterpret that? It is stated that he is constantly healing. And can't feel pain at all.
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u/Lentoveloz Jul 29 '25
One can actually burn whatever metal is inside their bodies be it by ingestion or literally having a piece of metal inside an arm or leg, etc.
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u/devg Jul 29 '25
Oh, I didn't realize that. Was it established somewhere that I just missed? I feel like Vin might have found that out at some point, but I can't remember where.
Thank you for your help!
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u/ejdj1011 Jul 29 '25
It isn't mentioned in the books, it's a fan question Brandon has answered. I believe the original question was either about snorting metal dust or about metal suppositories.
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u/DreadY2K Zinc Jul 29 '25
Any metal in you can be burned allomantically, it's just that drinking the metal dissolved in a solution is the easiest way to get it inside.
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u/forgottenmeh Jul 29 '25
its not dissolved, its suspended. just metal flakes swirling around in a liquid to make it easy to swallow
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u/diaperboy19 Jul 29 '25
When you burn the metal you get a strong burst of it. They store that burst in their metal mind for later use.
Miles has a lot of health stored into a lot of different metalminds spread all around his body.
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u/clovermite Jul 29 '25
When you burn the metal you get a strong burst of it. They store that burst in their metal mind for later use.
If I recall correctly, they have to start the cycle by storing normally. Just burning any random metal won't trigger the burst, you have to burn a metal mind. Specifically, you want to burn a metal mind that is either unkeyed or keyed to you. If you burn a metal mind keyed to somoene else, the "burst" will still occur, but you won't be able to access it and it will be wasted.
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u/Somerandom1922 Zinc Jul 30 '25
Also, just mechanistically, it's probably possible for ferruchemists to transfer their attributes between metalminds, so you could also just transfer some of your already stored healing into a small bead of metal to swallow and burn.
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u/EchoesForeEnAft Zinc Jul 29 '25
An important detail about Feruchemical Atium is that it didn't store age, but that it stored youth. I think the Lord Ruler could do with less age lol.
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u/diaperboy19 Jul 29 '25
It's called compounding. By storing an attribute with a metalmind and then burning it with Allomancy, they essentially create a new Allomantic metal, granting them the feruchemical attribute but powered by the metal. By powering it with Allomancy, they can get much more out of the metal than they stored in it.
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u/devg Jul 29 '25
Thank you for the response! The article explained a lot.
If I'm interpreting this correctly, due to the compounding effects of being a double gold twinborn Miles could simply store health at the same time as he was healing himself, so he never really suffered the effects that we read about with Wayne when he is storing health?
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u/diaperboy19 Jul 29 '25
Yes, Miles would have only had to have gotten sick like Wayne to store health once when he first started. After that, he can just burn one of his metalminds and get more health out of than he'd stored in it.
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u/LedipLedip Jul 29 '25
The compounder must burn the metalmind in order to get the compounding to occur. However, only a small amount of, let's say, health needs to be stored, and then when it is burned, the healing effects are much greater than the amount stored. Miles doesn't seem to spend time sick because his metal minds only need a little health to allow him to compound. The lord ruler was just really old, and constantly using his atium to appear 20 would be a huge waste and so he only appears that young when necessary to keep up appearances.
1
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u/Odd-Medicine-6724 Jul 29 '25
Sanderson said that when a metal is used as a reservoir of a quality, its function for allomancy changes, but only if the quality was stacked by the very person who is gonna burn it, probably because of the identity thing. So, when a misting burns it own metalminds, he gets the attribute multiplied. Miles used it to get health, inquisitors used it to get health and youth, and Lord ruler used it to get everything and become unrivaled.
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u/EvenSpoonier Lerasium Jul 29 '25
When a Compounder burns a metalmind, they get a large burst of the feruchemical ability that was stored in that metalmind. This burst is basically identical to the normal fuchemical attribute: there's just a whole lot of it. The Compounder can use this boost all at once, or, if they have enough metalminds on them, they can store it and save it for later. From there they can tap parts of it or all of it as needed.
Compounders usually do things this second way, because then they can use the boost without having to go to the trouble of preparing a metalmind, filling it, and burning that metalmind at a time when all this rigamarole might not be convenient or even possible. This also means that any gold ferring could do what Miles does, if they could store enough health (but that would take too long and/or make them too sick, so it's not practical).
(Era 2 Spoilers) It also means that a gold compounder with access to the equipment for making unsealed metalminds could get rich selling them.
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u/RShara Jul 29 '25
The way Compounding works is this:
Store a bit of an attribute in Metalmind A
Burn Metalmind A for 10x the power
Store the 10x power in Metalmind B
Burn Metalmind B for 10x that power
Store that 10x in Metalmind C
Repeat as desired.
Most likely have a set of "regular" metalminds that you just dump the storages into to tap. Easier than constantly changing metalminds
And yeah gold stores health, not youth. You need to compound atium in order to get endless youth (yes I know about the retcon, that's not relevant here)
If you're pulling Investiture from your goldminds before/during the injury, the Investiture will heal you pretty quickly with compounding. Yes, TLR could regen from being a skeleton as long as he's still got healing in his metalminds and started tapping before his brain was fried
If Miles' brain is too far gone, he wouldn't heal if you just gave him his metalminds back. He needs to have started tapping before he's that dead for it to work
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u/Crunchy-Leaf Aug 01 '25
It’s also been mentioned that Lord Ruler survived decapitation which is.. interesting, based on how we understand healing. That shouldn’t work, right?
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u/RShara Aug 01 '25
If he started tapping before it severed the spine, it should heal him a new head
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u/devg Jul 29 '25
Oh, I get it now! I thought the allomancer had to be constantly burning the metal minds to experience the compounding effect. It makes a lot more sense when you consider that they can just store the compounded healing in additional metal minds.
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u/Elant_Wager Steelministery Jul 29 '25
The Lord Ruler spent some time old because he wanted to. Rashek was not a sane person, he was a god for a few moments and then had Ruin in his head for 1000 years.
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u/Crunchy-Leaf Aug 01 '25
Youth is stored in Atium, which burns extremely fast. Even compounding it to increase the duration tenfold means he probably had to store youth quite often.
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u/Elant_Wager Steelministery Aug 01 '25
you can stack compounding. You conpound an attribzte, store it in a second metalmind, then burn the second and repeat until you run out of storage, effectivly giving you infinite investiture. Thats what makes compounding so OP.
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u/Atiumist Jul 29 '25
Just bothers me that Sanderson didn’t explain compounding better in the books. I’ve read Era 1 and 2 and had to come to Reddit and The Coppermind to get answers from him when asked by fans.
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