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Lightweavers can create illusions and soulcast, Elsecallers can teleport and soulcast, and Truthwatchers can see the future. I am positive Dalinar can find a use for those abilities. Superior mobility and information can shape the course of a war just as effectively as raw combat power. They're likely to be pretty handy in a fight, too. Lightweavers can make enemies strike at targets that don't exist, Elsecallers can transform people into fire at range, and Mistborn have rather firmly demonstrated that precognition can be handy in a fight. Plus, all the Orders have sprenblades, enhanced strength and speed, and considerable regeneration.

It should be noted that Scadrial is offically the most investiture-poor Shardworld we've seen, so it's not particularly surprising that Windrunners are more powerful than Mistborn without Atium. Well, kind of, the external physicals can be used at a considerable distance while Basic Lashings require touching the target. Also, the more dramatic uses of their powers seem to be really expensive in terms of Stormlight; the big ending fight occurred inside a Highstorm. There is also the matter of power scales and numbers. A small handful of humans can fly, heal almost instantly, and use sprenblades. Every Stormform can throw lighting bolts, and they were nasty enough when most of them were calling the Everstorm and the others were still having trouble overcoming the tendency for lightning to seek the shortest path to ground.

I wouldn't worry about that. There's kind of a lot of rock in planets. Dropping the surface below sea level by digging would be a very lengthy process even if people set out to do that, and if they only mined in places actually containing valuable materials it would basically never happen.

That's probably the reason. It doesn't really matter much beyond the setting being made out of steel. Though it did help show one of the rules of the setting, which is that Epic powers have funny interactions with organic and especially living material. Steelheart can't transmute living people into steel.

It's actually fairly understandable why the White Tower hasn't been doing it. Although it rarely comes up, one of the Three Oaths is "I swear to make no weapon with which one man may kill another". Armor doesn't technically count, but that's splitting hairs even for Aes Sedai.

I'm inclined to favor the Lifeless. Dalinar is a very skilled warrior, but he was also fighting with a poker. The Lifeless don't have to worry about blood loss, so it would take a pretty solid hit to bring one down, and swords are longer than claws. If the Lifeless are directed to strike at limbs until the Midnight Essences are crippled, they'd probably win.

Nohadon founded the KR. He was multiple Desolations prior to the collapse of the KR.

It could go one of three ways. Either the KR wins almost instantly while the channeler is still too started to seize the power and react, the KR looses shortly afterwards, or the KR can move fast enough that the channeler has trouble getting a good bead on them. It's also possible the KR could eat a fireball and pretend that was fatal, then surprise the channeler.

He was a fifth-grade science teacher, actually.

Probably hooked up one of the big power cells to a suit. There's no indication the electronics themselves are special, so it should be fairly easy to do that.

It has to have always been Renarin, because he's the only one of the Knights who can actually see the future. No one would question his presence in any of the areas where the countdown appeared, and everyone would be distracted during Dalinar's visions so they wouldn't necessarily notice him scratching on the walls. That would ordinarily depend on luck, but he could use precognition instead.

In a solo fight, Whitespine is the clear winner. The Warg isn't going to be able to break through the carapace and inflict significant damage. If the Warg gets to bring a rider with a spear, though, it'd turn out quite differently.

There's some weirdness with spren and writing that makes me think Odium might not be able to tamper with writing, much like how Ruin couldn't tamper with metal.

Ars Arcanum says they've got augmenter-type fabrials that enhance durability, attached to a sheet of metal to make halfshards. That might not technically be the primary effect, but it's definitely part of the effect.

Then why haven't we heard that shardblades can't cut infused gemstones? The halfshard can't be more invested than the gemstone powering it.

Sazed was a full feruchemist, so he had both.

Yeah, both of them would have guards. Of course, banging them together would push the guards towards the blades, but if they fit tightly enough and are sufficiently inflexible when attached they'd bounce instead of deforming. Also, halfshards use a strengthening fabrial like the ones in Grandbows, so even though physical strength can't stop a Shardblade investiture used to boost physical strength seems to be more effective at blocking them than investiture that isn't.

In feruchemy, mental speed and physical speed are separate. If he was tapping physical speed, he wouldn't be able to get the timing right, and I'm not sure just mental speed would do it. Bullets move very quickly; I could buy him reacting fast enough to dodge with just mental speed, but not fast enough to drag someone else into the line of fire. Allomantic atium would give him a good bit more lead time and more precise information, and Atium burners generally take the most efficient possible action to accomplish something. However, since he doesn't have Atium, he could have instead used both forms of speed.

The gate locks are part of the Oathgate, so being incredibly invested is reasonably plausible. As for the guards, I don't think they're actually invulnerable to shardblades. No one has strapped one of the guards to a stick and used it to parry a shardblade, which seems like something people would do if it worked. I think it just clamps tightly to the shardblade and the cover never actually touches the sharp portion.

We know fabrials can be made to resist Shardblades; halfshards demonstrate that.

They did not have sufficient available specialness.

It seems odd you'd be able to Soulcast aluminum if it's immune to investiture, although I suppose it might be that it only gains that immunity after the soulcasting is finished. However, the way the lock and guards reshape strongly implies they're fabrials or fabrial-like. I really doubt Ralkast is aluminum; cosmere books generally use the real-world names for materials. Also, aluminum isn't as strong as steel but it's not exactly what you'd call fragile. I've seen it used as a frame material for buildings.

I don't think that'll work on Steelheart. Nightwielder, probably, and likely a lot of other Epics considered to be invincible, but I don't think there are any flaws in Steelheart's invincibility besides his weakness. He's gotten into fights with a lot of other Epics and has been reported to survive many indirect forms of attack which would bypass simple physical resillence. The only way I can see it working is if the Honorblade has enough power to simply overcome Steelheart's ability outright, putting in enough force to exhaust whatever source of energy sustains Steelheart's powers. Given the extent of his displayed powers, I doubt it's up to the task. Nightblood might have better luck, but only with a lot of Breath as fuel.

Nightblood is pretty vague on the whole "morality" issue. If his wielder considers the target evil, that's good enough for Nightblood. He's also got an ambient field that repels some people and causes others to pick him up and use him until their lifeforce gets devoured, and I think Steelheart is susceptible to the second effect. It would probably have no effect, either bouncing off or passing through harmlessly.A Shardblade would work on an Epic who was simply too sturdy to harm with physical force, but I don't think that's the case. As far as I can tell, Steelheart's power is that he cannot be harmed, so no attack can bypass it without invoking his weakness. In addition to raw force, he's resisted suffocation and Deathpoint's ability to instantly destroy a targeted human.

Uh, mass is in fact universal. You can measure mass in any significant gravitational field with a balance where one side has a known mass. You could even measure it in freefall with a device that applies a known force and measures acceleration, but that would be somewhat more complicated. Weight is the force on a given mass due to gravity, which does vary depending on what planet you're on, but we use mass because it's exactly the same on any planet or in space. The kilogram is presently defined as the mass of a specific hunk of metal, and I don't think there's any particularly convincing reason to change base units. We could define it as a multiple of the mass of a proton, I guess. "Investiture stored in a unit mass of Feruchemical nicrosil" is probably the best Cosmere-wide measure because it's convertable, but Roshar could create a standardized diamond chip for measurement purposes. Breaths aren't actually a very good measurement, because while they can't be broken into smaller portions not all of them are the same size. This is especially obvious with Divine Breaths, but even normal ones vary in strength based on the health of the source.