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Questioner

Will, when advancing in the Gold stages is madra quality or quantity the most important?```

Will Wight

Quantity vs. Quality: quality.

Questioner

Is purity and quality of madra only about aspects or mostly about aspects, because I was thinking if it is, then Lindon and Eithan's pure cores are more or less very similar, except that Eithan did something with the soulfire to make it more dense or something along those lines?

Will Wight

So Eithan and Lindon's cores are very similar in that they're using the same jade cycling technique, so therefore they're increasing quantity and using external means to increase quality. So yes they would be very similar.

Questioner

There are authors who are prolific to a fault and make low quality, high quantity stuff while other more famous authors leave us in waiting for years to decades. How do you balance so you don't fall into either category?

Will Wight

That's a really good question, but my first response is there's a lot of grey area between those two things. Between the people who write a book a month and the people who don't ever write a book. There's a lot of flex in there, I think most people probably fall into the middle.

How do I answer this without stepping on any toes? So it's not too hard to fall in between those two extremes, however, what I really like to do is I generally go "What is my experience as a reader and what kind of experience do I want to have? What kind of books have I always wanted to see?" So to me, I want a book series where I know the next installment is gonna come out in a reasonable amount of time. To me, that feels better. I enjoy reading the books more. If I don't know when the next books coming out then I don't know how to evaluate the story because  you have a lot of books that are great first books in a trilogy but bad standalones. So if you leave them waiting for two and three and four years then they've just been reading a standalone and it's not a good standalone, it's only one third of a story. So I prefer books that come out regularly. The more I write and the more I read, the more I realize "That's very important to me." So books coming out regularly is important. On the other hand, I also want stuff that I enjoy. So if I were to really dash it off and write quickly, and I know that there are some people like PirateAba, Wandering Inn, who can write very quickly at a high level, and I've struck the balance that I've struck. If I go too much faster my quality will drop off significantly. So I'm never gonna be writing the ten million words that they've written. 

Questioner

What is the most reviled and infamous person in Cradle History?

Will Wight

One of the most well-known and reviled criminals in the history of the Blackflame Empire was a man named Gan Lo Zin, who operated the most well-known Remnant factory to be taken down and exposed.So-called Remnant factories kidnap children at Copper, then strap them to scripted devices and force-feed them scales. Their madra is cycled by force through scripts and madra devices, which is often inefficient, painful, and leads to long-term spiritual damage.However, this doesn't tend to matter. Because as soon as the children reach Jade, and thus leave stable Remnants of a high enough quality, they are slaughtered. Their Remnants are sealed and captured in boxes, to be categorized and sold to large organizations with a need for great quantities of bindings, dead matter, or Remnants for Lowgold bonding.When Gan Lo Zin was exposed, it caused a public outcry. It's estimated that he was responsible for the deaths of as many as thirty thousand people.However, when captured and questioned by the Skysworn, he maintained that he was far from the only one to operate such a facility. Outside the boundaries of the Empire, and even on other continents, he claimed that many large organizations ran their own Remnant factories.They were, he said, the inevitable price of progress.

The Last Reader

Will Wight

Read and find out!

Questioner

Does Eithan have any other cycling techniques and if he does, then, is that information addressed in Underlord? Because it was mentioned that the purification wheel was terrible for refilling your core. So, does he use external means, or is it just a different type of cycling technique?

Will Wight

So, it's not addressed in Underlord. It might be addressed in book 7, I'm not sure. So, he does have other cycling methods, but you only have one Jade cycling technique so that's his, like, core..

Questioner

That's like his bread and butter.

Will Wight

Ya. Right. So he definitely emphasizes quantity over quality.

Questioner

Why doesn't Will have more merch?

Will Wight

It takes a lot of time, effort, and money to develop a single product like that. Laura Verdin, the artist responsible for developing some of the merchandise you linked, is a professional designer and illustrator who makes a living designing excellent merchandise.

I make a living selling books.

The only reason we have merchandise at all is because people asked for it, and said some merch is better than nothing, and they just want a Cradle shirt to wear.

Okay, great! We have that now.

Would we make more money if we developed higher-quality merchandise and put effort into promoting and selling it? Yes!

But there’s a massive amount of up-front cost in both time and energy to doing that.

To me, not selling merchandise is not a problem that requires a solution. It’s not a problem at all. I don’t care if we sell merchandise or not; if you want something we have, cool! If not, no problem!

Those Undertale shirts you linked? Toby Fox didn’t develop those. A quick search around the site suggests he didn’t hire anyone to make them either; they’re fans who are providing a product to other fans under an official license.

If a professional merch designer wants to jump on Cradle and start making official products, we’d be willing to talk.

LLJKCicero

That all makes sense. I'm not saying you should care solely because of revenue you're missing out on, I think people would view it as a cool thing to do for your fandom.

Now, I wouldn't want to burden you personally with managing this kind of thing, I'm sure you're quite busy enough as it is. But as Cradle gets more and more popular, surely at some point it makes sense to hire a businessperson to manage all the things related to your books that aren't actually writing them? Like, I doubt Toby Fox is personally managing all the Undertale merch at Fangamer.

Will Wight

I already do have people who handle stuff that isn’t writing, and if we were to expand our merchandise, they would handle it.

But our current level of merch requires minimal management, and even that takes time and money to do. To expand our merch would mean hiring someone to run the store full-time, contracting artists to make better stuff, and managing the people involved.

Minimum, that requires more money and time and attention from me just to get the ball rolling. And that’s if I’m never involved in it again.

On top of which, that energy from my team is going to merchandise instead of anywhere else.

My Undertale example was meant to illustrate that Undertale has thousands of professional-quality artists making professional-level art for Undertale for free because they love it so much, so then the task is “Hire one of these people and get them to do their thing under our official banner.”

And even if we were in that scenario, just THAT is three orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive than what we’re currently doing.

Not to mention that Undertale has a hundred times the fanbase.

This stuff just takes more time and energy and money than people realize. For tertiary products that, quite frankly, we aren’t sure would be self-sustaining no matter how great they are.

We would need a LOT of Cradle fans to buy merch to justify that kind of expense. A higher percentage than is realistic to expect.

Could we make our money back on one incredible shirt design? Maybe. But we’re very far from certain that we could, even if we hired Leonardo Da Vinci’s ghost to draw us T-shirts.

Anonymous

You had said previously that Audible wasn't interested in rerecording Traveller's Gate, what changed?

Will Wight

Well, there's a lot of journey to that, a lot I can't really get into, story would take a long time; but the bottom line is, I always wanted to change it, and we ended up getting to the point where because Cradle was so popular I was like, we'll get more people interested in this, we wanted to do it, Travis wanted to do it. So, I wanted to do it the whole time. We ended up being able to rerecord it, it was one of those things where we really wanted the quality of Traveller's Gate to reflect the rest of the series, the rest of the books I mean. While Rebecca is busy making changes to my keyboard I can go ahead and tell you stories. So when we started off, I was reading the books myself, we were recording in a closet in my parents house. We had pinned a bunch of foam material and afghans and rugs and stuff to the walls in order to muffle the sound. We had bought our own equipment, we had a friend of ours who could do audio engineering, he came in and helped us out. We invested $2-3,000 into this, and that was a huuuge investment for us at the time. That was not easy, we were, that was a lot of book money. So we were going, yikes, we wanted an audiobook out there because, people want audiobooks. We want to record this, and we want to do as good of a job as we can, but we can't afford to do a really great, we can do the best job we can afford to do. So we did all that, and it was only because of you guys the fans sharing this with your friends, sharing it with your, recommending it, enjoying it, that we had enough money to do even that; and then we had the audiobooks out to people, and people enjoyed those, some people enjoyed the new books, obviously people really responded to Cradle. The more fan engagement we get, the more you guys are spreading the word, and this kind of thing, we are able to just do a better job. Without you guys we'd never be able to hire Travis; and so now Travis is part of the team, really he's the voice of Cradle, but more than that he's the voice of my books right now. I mean, Emily Woo Zeller did a fantastic job with the Shadow side of Elder Empire; but every other book is read by Travis. I think he is just, he does such an amazing job, with everybodies books, not just mine. With me in particular, I really think he does a fantastic job of bringing out my intentions for the text, how I want it to be delivered. I obviously write it with a certain delivery in mind, because that's just how I'm writing. He's just so great to work with, just a great guy. He delivers these things so we'll, that its just greater than the sum of its parts. I think Travis our audiobook narrator is, so great at this that I wanted to, take Traveller's Gate to the next level, and we really wanted it to happen. (...audio starts to cut out a bit...) We could go on about it for a long time, the reviews for House of Blades crossed 1000 this week, because we asked. We've never asked for reviews before, we don't ask for reviews. (A lot more dialogue is lost)(...) We don't want to ask for reviews, but on the other hand if I was a fan, I would want to know if reviews were deleted, and I would just go leave a review. Right? I would want to know. So we were going, people are going to want to know, but if we tell them it's going to be the same as asking for a review, so we realize, it took us a long time to draft out a... (...) We had a post about the reviews letting you know that they were down, and now we're over 1000. Also, this week, we heard from Audible that House of Blades was #8 on their most listened to books in fantasy, right? (Asking Rebecca off camera) For the week? Oh wow, for all of fiction? I thought it was, so yeah #8 in all of fiction, listened to this week was House of Blades. It's funny because there was a typo, they made a typo in the email where they sent it to us, where they said City of Blades was #8 and I was like, oh cool I'll let Robert Jackson Bennett know. That his book is at #8, but it was, it was House of Blades; and then we, look there's just so much stuff you guys, so I had to, just by the way this is the art that Rebecca got available and it's hanging behind me, it's going to be the new cover for the Travelling Gate collection. I love that art, (...) He was great to work with, he does great art and I think the quality shows through, and I think it's great, and it's like I'm thinking wow, I'm working with fans, right?; and then I think the trilogy cover is like, I love it so much. The detail on the dolls, right? He actually went through and drew the dolls appropriately. Some of them are dolls from the books, but a lot of them aren't, if you have a doll that you're looking for in the books it's up there in the shelves. So I love that, I think it's really cool. It's really neat, it's just neat to get to work with fans, to be able to work with Ari Ibarra so much, it's cool. 

Azqa

I think you'd stopped reading comments by the time I posted this one on a different blog post, so I'll copy it below since it seems relevant to me.

UnsouledCopperIronJadeLowgoldHighgoldTruegoldUnderlord

Lindon finds badges of other materials - "The first row contained a badge each of copper, iron, jade, and gold. That much he expected. But the second row moved from halfsilver to goldsteel to materials he couldn't identify. One of them was a deep, fiery red, and the other a blue so rich it was like a Forged slice of the sky."

Does the description of the power scale change at Underlord, or is that one term an aberration? Will we see people at Halfsilver / Goldsteel level, or is Underlord [now the ___Lord range of levels] simply represented by one of those?

Heck, I was wondering if Underlord was more a political title than truly an advancement-in-the-sacred-arts label.

If Halfsilver is used for the ___Lord stage, then what about "Silverlord"?

Will Wight

The materials motif changes after Gold, reflecting the fact that improving the quality of your madra alone is not how you advance. You could technically get all the way to Truegold just by cycling and refining your madra, it would just take forever.

I actually like Silverlord a lot, because it sounds cool. It seems kind of random in sequence, though: Underlord, Silverlord, Overlord.

bamfious

At this point, your beta reader apparatus (including Travis), in theory, should be able to help cut the bloat.

This plan makes a lot of conventional sense. i.e. you don't have to context switch as much.

My question is, how often do you come up with a brilliant scene because you were forced to think through how to "Frankenstein" several other scenes into one?Is this often?Is this rare?How can your feedback systems help support this level of creativity post first draft?

Will Wight

Whenever I decide to change the plan, what I’m really doing is saying “The idea I planned doesn’t work. I am going to go this other direction instead.”

But I’m making that judgment unilaterally and alone, with zero input from anyone else.

So what I’m doing this time is turning my inner critic off, writing the book as planned, and handing it to the team ASAP so that they can give me a more objective perspective BEFORE I spend months adjusting course midstream.

One of the core ideas behind this strategy is to stop leaning solely on my impression of my own writing, which I know is flawed, and getting the story in front of other readers first.

FunkyCredo

Consider that with you loosening up your outlining / drafting process you need to tighten up your editing process otherwise quality may decline.

I believe you’ve previously stated that your beta-reader team is a small/private group that you know personally. Now that the beta-reader team faces a bigger responsibility for the final outcome should it be expanded? Is there a need for some harsher voices to properly trim the excess fat?

Will Wight

Short answer: No.

Very long, more helpful answer:

"Consider that...you need to tighten up your editing process"

I am aware of that. The purpose of this strategy is to get to the editing stage sooner to avoid duplicated work and allow more time for editing.

"your beta-reader team is a small/private group that you know personally."

I have said that in the past because it provides a simple and easy answer to the question “Can I be a beta reader?”

The full answer, which I don’t often give, is that I only offer beta reading spots to people when I have a reason to believe that they will offer me valuable insight.

A person online telling me that they want to be a beta reader does not qualify them for consideration, because I don’t know them from Adam. Why SHOULD I give you a spot?

I now know most of my beta readers IRL, but only about half of them did I know before they joined the team. Rather than “You can only be a beta reader if I know you,” a more accurate answer is “You can only be a beta reader if I know you will be an asset to the team.”

Either because they represent the perspective of a group of readers or because they have a unique skill set or perspective themselves.

And then there’s attitude. I get to choose who I work with, so I don’t continue with people who are miserable to work with, and I don’t invite you if I think you will be.

"Now that the beta-reader team faces a bigger responsibility for the final outcome should it be expanded?"

The limiting factor on the beta team is not now, and never has been, size. It’s always time.

It comes down to how much time I give each reader and how much time I allot for edits.

"Is there a need for some harsher voices to properly trim the excess fat?"

I know there’s this tendency to imagine a beta team full of “my mom” and “my best friends who don’t read fantasy” who all tell the author that things are great and are afraid to tell the truth because of their affection for the author.

First of all, I don’t think this is a real thing that happens to anyone.

In my experience beta reading and editing, even the writer’s mom and best friend gently tell the writer what they think, and then the writer just doesn’t listen.

I’ve also tried people on the team who said “It’s great!” and couldn’t articulate WHAT they thought was great or why.

Which is not helpful. I eventually figured out that they weren’t afraid of reprisal or discouragement or whatever, they just genuinely didn’t know how to break down their own experience.

So they’re no longer on the team.

Second...look, I know you guys don’t know me. I’m a pretty open-book sort of person, and I try to be as genuine as I can online, but there’s always going to be a difference between how I come across on social media and who I really am.

But I promise you, my team is willing to tell me the harsh truth.

I know you might be thinking, “Yes, but you can never really know, can you? If you’re deaf to honest feedback, then everyone around you knows it but you.”

I get that. I really do.

There’s nothing I can say to prove it to you, you just have to trust me. I have many, many weaknesses, but an aversion to honest feedback from trustworthy people is not one of them.

Questioner

What qualities did Yerin have that made the Sword Sage take her on as a disciple?

Will Wight

This gets into spoiler territory, because I will be answering that question thoroughly in the series, but suffice it to say that she was born strong. And she demonstrated that at an early age.

Questioner

I totally understand Will's point about they don't currently sell, therefore doesn't make sense to put a lot of effort into it.

Will Wight

Yeah, let me elaborate on that a little bit.

While what I said was and is true, it’s less about “current merch sales are low, so we won’t invest more in them,” and more that we have little indication that merchandise is worth investing in at all.

The only reason we have any merch whatsoever is because when we didn’t, we got REGULAR requests for “Something. Anything. Even just a book logo on a shirt!”

Okay, cool! We have that now.

Anything more than that requires a lot—and I do mean a lot; like, more than you’d think—of time and attention to get rolling.

In order to be willing to invest so much into it, we would need to think that there would be enough of a market that we would break even on our costs and time.

YOU would buy a Path of Twin Stars decorative book or a sword-replica letter opener. I believe you would, and frankly those sound really cool. I would be proud to sell those.

But how many people do you represent? Are we talking ten sales? A hundred? A thousand?

I have no idea.

We have to price it so that we’re not taking a loss on the individual item, AND assume that we sell enough to break even on the investment to develop and maintain these products. Which is a lot to take on faith.

And I, personally, would not buy either of those products if I were a Cradle fan. So it’s hard for me to say that we would sell enough to make the investment worth it.

TL;DR - Current merch sales being low aren’t the only reason we suspect we couldn’t sustain a line of high-quality merchandise.

Questioner

As someone progresses as a Traveller of Valinhall, does the "quality" of their steel ever increase, and with it the strength, or does it remain the same as the day they earned it?

Will Wight

You're able I guess, to channel more of it as you go on, so you draw more of the steel, as Simon demonstrates in the books.  So you can channel more of it, and you can also control the amount you draw a little more, but no, what the steel actually does remains constant.  So you don't upgrade to better steel or whatever.

Questioner

Would you accept a copious donation of Oreos? Like a pallet?

Will Wight

You know, I don't know how many Oreos are in a pallet, but I'm going to guess it's not enough.

(Transcribers note: It is hard to get good data without being a retailer for Nabisco or having access to wholesalers, but as best as I can tell, there are twelve 20 oz packs of Double Stuf Oreos per case, and 36 cases per pallet.  This would be approximately 540 pounds of Oreos.  I will do everyone a favor and not figure out how many calories.)

(By request, I have now calculated the number of calories.  907,200 calories in a pallet of Oreos, assuming the above quantities.  For comparison, that's 1,055.07 kwH.  In 2017, the average home used 867 kwH per month.)

Kaz

Hey Will, is Lindon's Bloodforged Iron Body and a typical Sandviper's both considered "Perfect Iron" in terms of advancement potential? I've always been a little uncertain, since "perfect" is kind of a binary term but we see with Lindon that the same specialization can have a large degree of difference

Will Wight

Yeah so that's a problem. I regret that terminology. What I should have done was call them 'Advanced Iron Bodies' or something; because I say perfect and that suggests that there are not any grades of quality (which of course there are). So I've created this implication that both Lindon's Iron Body and this other person's Iron body are both equally perfect when of course that is not so. So there are actually grades of Perfect Iron Body so of course they're not all perfect. The terminology I reget on that but I'm stuck with it now.

Questioner

Would a fire path be one of the fastest way to level up? All you would have to do is stand next to a barn-fire and absorb the ambient fire manna it would give off, then refine it. On that note how different would the manna type be, between different types of fire. A hearth-fire warming a family home in the winter, with all the "happy" connotation that come with it, compared to like an arson attack destroying someone's home and possession and just everything that they have worked for. Both are fire but you get what I mean.

Will Wight

A fire Path would not be the fastest way to advance, because the aura would be slightly rarer and harder to collect compared to, say, earth or air. But it's still very fast, as are all the Paths that draw from aura easily found in nature.

There WOULD be significant differences between those two Paths! Fire from different Paths could take on different qualities depending on how it's used an where it comes from; you could have a gentle flame that spreads slowly and provides lots of even warmth, versus a violent flames that consumes rapidly and burns out quickly.

Questioner

Thoughts on the upcoming Wheel of Time TV show?

Will Wight

Well as I.... 

My siblings both started Both started laughing because I have strong opinions 'cause I love wheel of time and I tweeted this week about the line that Moiraine has in the trailer that it's, she's looking for someone and it's one of the five of you and the five of you being, 

Perrin Mat Rand Egwene and Nynaeve. Well the one thing that we know about the person she's looking for is that it is a man, so it should have been one of the three of you, which is what indeed it is in the books. 

So what I'm hoping is that they are, they're clearly playing it so that you, the viewer doesn't know who the main character is, so hopefully this is an Aes Sedai sort of thing, Aes Sedai like Moiraine are the sorceresses of the setting and they are known for lying without technically lying? 

So hopefully what she has said is something that is technically true. 

It is one of the five of you, and that is something where they're going to be less certain and she has not lied. 

That's what I'm hoping and not that they fundamentally changed the core story of the wheel of time, because if they did that, the fact that it's a man is super relevant. 

To the plotline, because men can't use magic or they go insane, and the savior figure is supposed to be a man who can use magic. 

Who is going to go insane? 

so if they change that I'm going to be, uh... in the struggle zone. 

In terms of my expectations for the series, I have low expectations. 

I always do for any adaptation and it's one of the reasons why I have never been someone who has actively pursued adaptations of my own work, mainly because I just assume all adaptations are bad. 

Will Wight

So I do have a vision of cradle. 

It is the vision that I'm putting in the books. 

I would love for there to be an animated version, especially an anime, would make my life complete, but if I don't get it, Oh well, I know that most adaptations just aren't great. 

And because of that, I've never been enthusiastic about getting my work adapted. 

So that is how I feel about Wheel pf time. 

Do I want the wheel of time to be adapted? 

I don't care. 

Wheel of Time exists in a great format. 

That format being a series of novels, so do I need it to be a TV show no, I don't, but I'm hoping it's really good. 

That would be awesome. 

I would Love for it to be, I thought the adaptation of a Song Ice and fire was great all seven seasons. 

All seven seasons were just fantastic and if it was that quality I would be very impressed. 

How would you feel about a Ruby style adaptation? 

if you're talking about the animation of Ruby? very positively! 

So yeah. 

Sam Wight

How did you feel about Dune will? 

Will Wight

How do I feel about dune? I like Dune a lot, I'm not sure how much I recommend it to other people because it's extremely slow and it doesn't properly end, but for me it was fantastic! I Loved it I was super immersed in it. I really liked Dune as a kid. I thought the Lore was fantastic. 

The worldbuilding was great, the acting was phenomenal. 

The writing was really good. 

The music was some of the coolest I've ever seen in the movie. 

Questioner

Did anyone else notice there's eight seasons of Game of Thrones? 

Will Wight

No there aren't.....

Questioner

Why aren't the books longer?

Will Wight

If I could still release 2 books a year and have them be 20k-30k words longer than they are now, but make no extra profit, I’d do it in a heartbeat. (I wouldn’t literally double the size of the books in the middle of a series, that would be jarring, but I could imagine a substantial increase of ~25%.)

But it’s like you said: if I take that whole year to write one double-sized book and release it, I’ll have fewer people reading it. So I’ve done two books’ worth of work for less than one regular book’s worth of visibility and engagement.

I can’t maintain momentum at that pace, so I’ll slowly lose visibility until I vanish in the sea of Kindle Unlimited.

Also, I have people emailing me angrily every time about having to wait six months. I can’t even imagine the response if I said I was adjusting my pace to one book per year.

There are a lot of reasons, but they mostly relate back to momentum.

I’m reliant on Amazon for all of my marketing, which includes letting anyone who isn’t subscribed to my social media accounts know that the book is released. Most of my readers are not following me for releases, they simply notice that a new Cradle book is out and go buy it.

Amazon is geared toward a structure of pushing the leaders, i.e. the more you sell, the more visibility you get on the site, and the more you sell. As long as you keep pushing that wheel of releases, you stay highly ranked on the site.

And I am dependent on that rank to reach most of my readers. The MOST efficient release schedule would be a book every 1-3 months, but they would take a...significant drop...in quality if I tried to write them in that amount of time.

I’ve stuck to a schedule of 2 books per year, which I’ve been able to do because I’m already established and have a large fan base, but I do see a huge dip in reader engagement and awareness between those two releases. I’ve been told by many other authors that this schedule is not frequent enough or maintainable...except that I’ve been able to do it.

High-profile published authors can do otherwise because their publishers handle the job of getting the word out to readers, but since I’m dependent on Amazon, the name of the game is momentum.

So...given that I have a finite time frame within which to write and produce a book, I have a finite word count, and trial and error has taught me that the sweet spot for that word count is about 90-100k words.

There are many other reasons, such as consistency within a series, but this is the main one. If I only release one book a year, people forget about me, sales and visibility drop, more people forget about me, and then instead of topping the Amazon charts I’m no longer able to write full-time. And then the books take even longer.

That’s the partial answer. TL;DR - It’s about how Amazon works.

However, this answer is complex and always evolving. Any part of it could change as my situation and Amazon’s policies change, which they both often do.

Questioner

I know that splitting your core was created by the rival of the first Empty Palm-user. I just do not think that Simon and the rival are the only people in the world who have thought of this. Surely their must be others. Also, can one keep splitting their core repeatedly. I can imagine how strong Lindon could he be if he had multiple paths in his body. I'm still unclear if splitting your core doubles your madra and if it has a cost. Another thing that comes to mind is can Lindon upgrade one of his cores to jade while still having his other core at the copper-level?

Will Wight

This will be explored in Blackflame, but I don't really consider it a spoiler, as it deals with mechanics we've already seen in the books.

If you're especially allergic to SPOILERS, stop reading now.

Now!

No, the Heart of Twin Stars is not the only technique in the world for splitting cores. Others have done it, and I expect we'll run into them.

Yes, you can split your core repeatedly.

Splitting your core does not double your madra, and there's a very slight loss in energy when you split. So if you had 100 MP before the split, now you have two sources of 49 MP each. The other 2 MP are lost in the process.

He can upgrade one core without the other. At the end of Soulsmith, one of his cores is Iron and the other Copper. But he's considered an Iron, because his body was upgraded.

Here's something else that will be dealt with in Blackflame: an Iron core split into two doesn't make two Copper cores, it makes two very small Iron cores. Your stage of advancement is based on the quality of your madra, not the amount.

Questioner

Would there be any point in using 8 peak natural treasures like Titan's bone as soulfire fuel to advance?

Will Wight

Yeah, if you were advancing to Archlord it would be very fast. It wouldn't give any better of a body. You would have to then control that aura though, which would be difficult if you were advancing to Archlord. However, it would make a lot of high quality soulfire, so if you are an Archlord and you would have all of that then you would be super filled up on soulfire.