No matter if you're travelling alone or with a group of friends into the vast world of Skyrim's Tamriel, there is near infinite room for customization of your grand adventuring party. Among these customization options is just one of Skyrim's incredible but small details: the Skyrim Standing Stones. Players become quickly familiar with these Standing Stones as they usually come upon the first three right after the tutorial area and breaking free of execution in Helgen. Once finding freedom alongside Ralof, players will come across their first 3 stones.
These Skyrim Standing Stones serve as not only small customization points for player's journeys, but important ones as well due to their ability to only have one active at any time. This means that a while a player can return and choose another at any point, they function as a "class system" of sorts, aligning a character with a playstyle from the very start of the game. This is great for Skyrim: Together and creates a functioning RPG party to enjoy with any dedicated Skyrim multiplayer server.
The First Three Skyrim Standing Stones
Fortunately the first three Skyrim Standing Stones players come across are among the best in the game in terms of usefulness, allowing players to quickly master their skills in preparation for the adventures ahead. These Standing Stones include:
- The Warrior Stone
- The Thief Stone
- and The Mage Stone
These Stones are extraordinarily important to deciding each and every playthrough of Skyrim for many players as they act as an additional layer of how players will decide to combat the challenges ahead. Each stone provides a 20% bonus experience increase in skills relevant to their type, with Warrior being all "combat skills", Thief being all "stealth skills", and Mage being all "magic skills". These descriptors can be quite confusing, but we covered them more in our Skyrim Builds blog post and infographic below.
Which Skyrim Standing Stone should I choose?
This is a difficult question as the answer widely varies based on what role you're playing for your Skyrim party (or for yourself in singleplayer). If you're playing an extremely bulky melee-attacker, you'll want to start your playthrough using the Warrior Skyrim Standing Stone to gain experience in all of your relevant skills as quickly as possible: Heavy Armor Proficiency, One/Two Handed Weapons, the Block Skill and possibly more. Once discovering the Lord Stone on your travels, use it to increase your bulk, or the Steed stone to increase carrying capacity.
Alternatively as an example, if a player is favoring a more Stealth-based playthrough, there is a wide variety of Stones to choose after training alongside the Thief Standing Stone. The Shadow Stone south of Riften will allow the player early-game access to Invisibility; a strong asset for any skilled thief. Instead, a player interested in dealing out more punishment may favor the Serpent Stone, east of the College of Winterhold, allowing them to deal massive poison damage to an enemy from range while paralyzing their target momentarily.
The Best Standing Stones Ranked
Among all the Skyrim Standing Stones spread across Tamriel, players may be interested in which to search out first, to optimize their Skyrim playthrough as much as possible. While the first three encountered are among the best as they provide a significant boost in both replayability as well as experience gain for any new player, they are definitely not THE best among the extremely powerful 13 options available. The best Skyrim Standing Stone is The Lover Stone, East of Markarth, as it provides only 5% less bonus experience, but to ALL skills.
Due to the fact that the Warrior stone doesn't even provide a bonus to archery in this unique case (instead Archery applying to the Thief stone skills), players will favor the Lover Stone as it will be a Standing Stone they can choose and simply forget about as the most impactful across their playthrough. The second most powerful Skyrim Standing Stone is the Steed Stone, as players will struggle with hoarding loot early in the game and will require additional inventory capacity.
Standing Stone Further Rankings
If your Skyrim Together party is looking to further solidify their Standing Stone choices, consider our rankings below, but also keep in mind that they are subjective! Every player will experience their adventure vastly different from one another and every Skyrim party will tackle challenges in unforeseen ways despite their Standing Stone ranking below.
- (1) Lover Stone
- (2) Steed Stone
- (3) One of the first three stones: Warrior, Thief, or Mage
- (4) The Lady Stone, as it provides much needed Health and Stamina recovery
- (5) The Lord Stone, providing ANY build incredible additional survivability
- (6) The Atronach Stone, providing additional Magicka and Spell Absorption
- (7) The Tower Stone, allowing a player to lockpick nearly anything once a day
- (8) The Shadow Stone, providing a single-use invisibility each day
- (9) The Serpent Stone, to paralyze and poison a target briefly, once daily
- (10) The Ritual Stone, allowing resurrection of corpses to assist once daily
- (11) The Apprentice Stone, allowing a player to die instantly to all mages
For the full list of each Skyrim Standing Stone and their exact purposes, check out the Skyrim wiki here, but this ranking should give players a rough outline of how to create their party and form a strong team composition! Similarly in Skyrim as it is in many role playing games of the modern era, bonus experience is usually the strongest available option for players!
Looking for more RPG Gaming Ideas?
- The Ultimate Valheim Progression Guide and Tips
- Skyrim: Crazy Builds for your Skyrim Together Party
- Beginner Multiplayer Guide to DayZ
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