Standing Stones
Guide Index
This guide for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will cover the Standing Stones located in the game, serving as an index for the more detailed guides that cover each specific stone, separated by primary location.
Table of Contents:
- Standing Stone and Doom Stone Overview
- Skill Advancement Boosting Stones
- Stat Boosting Stones
- Spell and Ability Granting Stones
- Standing Stone Related Achievements
Standing Stone/Doom Stone Overview
Standing Stones, which can also be referred to as Guardian Stones or Doom Stones, serve a unique yet essential purpose in Skyrim. Each of these obelisk-like structures grant a unique blessing, depending on which stone is activated, that buffs your character in any number of ways. These buffs can be providing faster health regeneration or extra carry weight, to allowing the once-per-day spells that can help you in a pinch, or even more interestingly, boosting the rate at which your skills advance and level up.
Each Standing Stone’s blessing is essentially permanent, lasting indefinitely once granted to your character. However, you can only have one blessing from any Doom Stone active at any given time, meaning when you choose a new blessing from a different stone, it will overwrite and cancel out the previous blessing you had. In addition, with the exception of the Lover Stone, all these blessings can stack with other similar boost granted through other means like potions or armor enchantments. With the right combination of blessings and gear, you can seriously supercharge your character in a number of directions, allowing you to do far more than you could otherwise.
Below, you will find all of the 13 Doom or Standing Stones located in Skyrim grouped by the type of blessings they grant. You can refer to the Table of Contents or just browse below as the organisation should be self-explanatory. Click on any of the links contained within to be taken for the specific guide for that stone which will provide you with a thorough, detailed analysis of the benefits each stone gives, any potential drawbacks, how to locate them, and any interesting items or enemy creatures you may face in their vicinity.
Skill Advancement Boosting Stones
Mage Stone
This Standing Stone grants a skill advancement gain of +20% to all skills governed by the Mage Class, mostly those relating to spell casting and the Enchantment crafting skill.
Thief Stone
Doom Stone granting +20% skill gain to all of your charter’s skills that fall under the Thief Class, focusing on those benefiting the stealthy and backhanded among us along with Alchemy crafting.
Warrior Stone
Grants a +20% skill advancement boost to those skills considered to be under the Warrior Class, otherwise known as the more combat and melee oriented skills including the Smithing crafting tree.
Lover Stone
Doom Stone granting a global boost to skill advancement but at a slightly less pace than the others, granting +15% speed to the overall rate at which you advance in level. The only stone known not to stack with other bonuses, namely the skill boosting you get from resting.
Stat Boosting Stones
Apprentice Stone
Doom Stone that effectively doubles both the rate at which you recharge your magika pool and your weakness to magika effects like spells and rune traps.
Atronach Stone
Increases you magika pool by a set amount while granting spell absorption. However, it reduces the rate at which your magika pool recharges.
Lady Stone
Increases the rate at which your character regenerates booth health points and stamina.
Lord Stone
Grants armor and magika resistance, effectively giving you some decent damage reduction from all sources.
Steed Stone
More of a utility Standing Stone, though still significantly useful by adding to your carry weight. It makes worn armor weightless and causes armor to leave no movement penalties whatsoever.
Spell and Ability Granting Stones
Ritual Stone
Grants the ability to raise all corpses as undead within a small area of effect radius around you, to fight on your behalf for a short time.
Serpent Stone
This Standing tone allows you to cast a ball of energy that will paralyze your target for a short time while dealing some poison damage as well.
Shadow Stone
Doom Stone granting a limited duration Invisibility spell you can use to help hide yourself from view.
Tower Stone
Allows you to automatically unlock any locked item with a skill rating of Expert or lower, without ever having to use a lockpick or bring up the lockpick-tumbler interface.
*All abilities granted by these stones cost no magika to cast and can only be used once every 24 in-game hours.
Standing Stone
Achievements and Trophies
Blessed
Pretty simple and self-explanatory, just find one of the stones and activate it. Best to do at the beginning of the game right outside of Helgen after you escape, since the Guardian Stones are on the left of the path to Riverwood.
Xbox 360 Achievement: +10 Gamerscore
Playstation 3 Trophy: Bronze Trophy
Standing Stones
Basically, just locate all of the stones listed in this index. You can find detailed directions in the guides linked in this page above. Apparently there is a bug that allows you to revisit already discovered shrines to build up for this, however, it is likely to be patched soon if not already.
Xbox 360 Achievement: +30 Gamerscore
Playstation 3 Trophy: Silver Trophy
Last Updated on October 4, 2020 by Standard of Entertainment