Could someone give me a concise explanation of the powers and applications of different types of Investiture?

[Jedal]

Seriously. As I look through some of the Ars Arcanum for each book, I have trouble comprehending certain concepts, such as the use for Aluminum holding identity. What sort of uses to the more minuscule abilities in the Cosmere have?

[tobar14]

Magic

[dashardie]

I don't know that there is really a way to explain that...."concisely". Your best bet would be to go take a look at the Cosmere 101 posts in The Coppermind...can't get much more concise than that, I'm afraid...

[Dunkum]

1 hour ago, Orderbound said:

Seriously. As I look through some of the Ars Arcanum for each book, I have trouble comprehending certain concepts, such as the use for Aluminum holding identity. What sort of uses to the more minuscule abilities in the Cosmere have?

as has been noted, it is difficult to explain concisely, and in some cases the use/value of a given power is not clear in a vacuum.  to take your aluminum example:

 

Spoiler for era 2 mistborn (Alloy of Law and beyond):

Spoiler

storing identity in an aluminummind allows a ferruchemist with other ferruchemical abilities to create a metalmind that is not keyed to any individual, so anyone with that ferruchemical ability can access it.  example: if you can store both strength (pewter) and identity (aluminum), you can create a pewtermind that any other pewter ferruchemist can draw from.  note though that this means that you need to have access to at least 2 ferruchemical abilities in order to do this, so someone who can only use aluminum would not be able to.

there are a few other examples I could give, some from the books, some based on questions Brandon has answered or partially answered.

the other thing is, there are an awful lot of different abilities, giving a one line description of every one would still take several pages.  for any ability that you want more information on, I agree with the above poster and highly recommend the Coppermind which is essentially a Cosmere wiki.  it has pretty good, and generally up to date, information on almost everything.

[Weltall]

Adonalsium Did It.

But seriously, the Coppermind is your best bet. It will give you a rundown of, for example, all of the Metallic Arts as a whole and by individual metal), what we know of the Nahel Bond, Surgebinding and the applications of the Surges, Awakening and Heightenings in BioChroma etc. In a series like this, even a 'concise' explanation will take a long time and you might as well go for a source where it's already been done. If you're still confused on a point I'm sure everyone will be happy to clarify it for you as best we can.

[The One Who Connects]

The Coppermind pages give concise definitions of what the different powers do, but oftentimes it lacks... depth, extrapolation on the subject. Best recent example of this is current arguments on the Eighth Heightening in Warbreaker and what it really means by something as simple as "Command Breaking"

Basically, if everything was concise and understood, we would not have a lot of the threads/theories that we have on here.

[DrakeMarshall]

You may notice how in the mistborn novels, the main characters keep finding out about new metals, and figuring out that their conclusions about how magic works have been all wrong. This is a more realistic depiction of magic in a book, because there is no field in which people have all the answers. It also means that... Well... There's always another secret. RAFO.