Standing Stones: Locations and Effects

This guide will give you the location of all the standing stones and what they do. This guide IS NOT for those who want to explore (obviously, but I thought I should warn you.)

What Are Standing Stones?

In case you don't yet know, Standing Stones are a feature of Skyrim that allows you to have an extra perk from one of them. These perks either give a constant effect, or let you do something once every 24 in-game hours. This guide will tell you what all these do, what they are good for, and where to find them.

The Guardian Stones

The Guardian Stones consist of the Warrior Stone, Mage Stone, and the Thief Stone.

The Warrior Stone will level Block, Heavy Armor, One-Handed, Smithing, and Two-Handed 20% faster.
The Mage Stone will level Alteration, Conjuration, Destruction, Enchanting, Illusion, and Restoration 20% faster.
The Thief Stone will level Archery, Alchemy, Light Armor, Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Sneak, and Speech 20% faster.

These stones are encountered not far into the game and are very helpful for leveling things early on, or later when you are powerleveling.

The Lover Stone

The Lover Stone will increase all skills 15% faster. This boost will count as the Lover's Comfort rested bonus, the best rested bonus in the game, but will not allow you any other rested bonuses through sleeping.

This stone is nice for players who want to level all skills and their total level quicker. However, it is not very good for powerleveling skills as you can easily get and change a 20% boost at the Guardian Stones. This bonus also applys to vampires and werewolves who can't get sleeping bonuses.

The Apprentice Stone

The Apprentice Stone will make you regenerate magica 100% faster, but you will take twice as much magica damage.

This stone is very nice for mages that use wards, as they can block spells to avoid taking the extra magica damage.

The Atronach Stone

The Atronach Stone raises magica by 50 points and makes you absorb 50% of spells you are hit by, but it makes magica regenerate 50% slower.

This stone is nice for DPS mages, who don't use wards and want to put as much hurt on the target as quickly as possible.

The Lady Stone

The Lady Stone will make your health and stamina regenerate 25% faster.

This stone is nice for melee fighting where you power attack untill your stamina is out, then run around your targets to avoid being hit, usually done by light fighters. It does this by letting you back into the fight sooner, as you spend less time running to regenerate.

The Lord Stone

The Lord Stone gives you +50 damage resistance and +25% magic resistance.

This stone is great for all players except those that are good at dodging and sneaking, as they won't be hit as much.

The Ritual Stone

The Ritual Stone allows you to reanimate all the corpses around you to fight for you, for 60 seconds, once per day. This spell only works on corpses levels 1-75, though this level cap can be increased with perks or by other methods.

This stone is nice for large fights, where you can kill a few enemies, bring them back to life, then use them to fight the rest of the enemies. However, considering that there is a reanimate dead magic skill, and that this stone buff would take the place of having other stone's buffs, it is not recommended you use it.

The Serpent Stone

The Serpent Stone allows you to paralyze one target, once per day, for 5 seconds and do 25 additional damage.

Honestly, this stone is the worst ever. DO NOT USE IT.

The Shadow Stone

The Shadow Stone allows you to become invisible for 60 seconds, once per day.

This stone is very nice for people who use sneak a lot or want to get to a dungeon's end quick.

The Steed Stone

The Steed Stone gives the user +100 carry weight, no movement penatly from equipped armor, and removes the weight of equipped armor.

My personal favorite, this stone is good for heavy armor users, looters, and sneak users. It allows heavy armor users to run longer, make less noise, and help them with their high armor weight, it gives looters extra room for their loot, and it allows sneak users to move with even less noise. In addition to the main reasons listed for each play style, all others apply as well, of course.

The Tower Stone

The Tower Stone allows you to instantly open any lock, besides master level locks, once per day.

This stone is good for looters or newer players that don't have a lot of lockpicks stockpiled yet.

End

As always, thank you for reading and I hope this guide helps. Please leave a comment if you find any errors or have any suggestions, and keep an eye out for my new guides.

Specific Locations and Effects of stones were found from The Elder Scrolls Wiki (http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_Wiki)

[Mr. Packrat]

This is a very helpful guide thank's

[Heywood13]

I can never find tower stone!!!!!

[ciberzombie]

but on other hand if you use potion of fortify restoration 100% (or less if vampire with certain perk)
before activating stone you become practicaly imune to any form of magic at cost of total inability to summon (it seams that resurection is unaffected)

[ciberzombie]

so with atronach stone on you even could never sucesfuly summon karstag if you are unlucky ( actualy with atronach stone you have 12,5% or greater chance to waste all 3 summon attempts , or 50% or more to waste each)

[ciberzombie]

i must add that atronach stone (golem stone) is detrimental for atronach (or any non-undead) summoners cause it also absorbs your own spells cast on you, most notably - summoning spells, and most anoying case of it is summon spectral assassin cause its once-per-day spell and summon karstag (3 total casts only)

[Banake]

Thanks.

[theMilkDrinker]

Psyco, I'm just now seeing this a year late lol, but to answer your question: I'm not sure. All I know I get from the wiki and the wiki doesn't specify. And @Dasneezequeen, you're welcome, glad to help.

[Dasneezequeen]

Thank you saved me from having to Alt-tab (and risk causing a crash).

[GentlePsycho]

theMilkDrinker, i have the heavy armour skills fully completed, and one of the skills is that the Heavy armour does not affect your Stamina, does the Steed Stone still give this bonus, or will it conflict and staying the same?

[angeneil]

THANK YOU.