Number 15, Burger King Foot Stone. The last thing you want in your magical stone is someone's foot fungus but, that might be what you gaet. A Nord erected a stone anonymously, in the night, with a carving of his feet in a bag of lettuce, with the caption 'This is the lettuce you eat in Riverwood.' Admittedly he had shoes on, but that's even worse!
The best stone hands down is the one that lets you resurrect all the dead bodies around u once a day. Just wait 24 hours and all the bodies stay around u. By the time u get to whiterun u already have an undead army following you around.
Fun fact: If you get the aetherial crown, have the ritual stone as your "Backup" stone (The one stored in the crown) then unequip and reequip it, you immediately get the power back TL;DR: Infinite ritual stone casts with no cooldown
As a Breton, you only need 2 points in magic resistance. 25% (Breton bonus) + 25% (Lord Stone) + 15% (Agent of Mara) + 20% (2x 10% from perk) = 85% The third one is wasted, and it means you only need 50 alteration to reach that level (though the 40 first levels are the slowest to reach, until you can get telekinesis)
Atronach imho is the most powerful because you get a 50% chance of absorbing spells... that means that you have a 50% chance of not taking damage from magic. If you stack this with abilities from the trees, races, and gear, you can be completely immune to any magic.
A major downside to the atronach stone for me is that you can absorb your own conjure spells. I like being a necromancer and never take the atronach stone because I end up having to spam my conjure spells upwards of 5-10 times because I keep absorbing the spell.
@@Dinosaurman34 While true, you can RP it like a Necro in training... I can see how that would be an issue. You could always try to find a mod that fixes that issue too.
@@Dinosaurman34 tru but as a Necro you still can reanimate corpses. cause atronach didn't interference with them. Also wasn't there some aoe spell that give you mana regen with this stone?
My oh my, just yesterday my current character took a rest at Mehrunes Dagon Shrine... Would be a pity not to walk a bit further to the Lord Stone and y'know, transform into a damn dreadnought! Thanks for the most convenient info Master Neloth!
The Steed Stone is my stone of choise for any warrior build at the beginning when I'm looting for money and resources. Later when I don't need to loot as much, I switch it to the Lord Stone purely for the magic resistance. Also IMO the difference in speed is noticeable when you're wearing heavy armor and the fact that you can sprint for longer is great. It also gives you more than +100 carrying capacity. Yes, it gives you a flat +100 but since your armor has 0 weight, all that carry weight is also zero, meaning you can carry your armor's worth more in addition to that +100.
Serpent Stone is actually really busted for early game power leveling using the trainer exploit, where you pay a chill (doesn't get mad at you for attacking them once) trainer npc for all 5 lessons, then paralyze them with the stone, then crouch and spam E on them so that the moment they start moving again you get to pickpocket them for free (for some reason even if it says that chance of success is 0%, you still get to take the item without anyone noticing).
The shadow stone would be great if you need stealth but don't have a stealth build. Like the one quest in the civil war that requires sneaking around to blackmail that one jarl.
I kinda despise the stones with redundant effects from a gameplay perspective. They really should have made some stones with cool, unique powers that would make you actually really interested in obtaining them and that add variety/versatility to your characters skills. Couldn't be a Bethesda game without some head scratching game design tho lol.
Agree that these could be unique abilities, but the common theme between the worst stones in the list were that they were kind of an early game stones that could be exchanged later on. Fillers for your build until you've got the necessary skills up. I'd say it is a bit of a fault in us that we are looking for the endgame only, forgetting how we're supposed to get there.
With the serpent stone is quite useful when doting the Aetherial Crown, it is kinda of annoying, but you can chain paralyze your enemies, and it gives some damage too, so its great to deal with the enemies that can kill you in a tap.
Well, that’s better than the Lord sign from Morrowind and Oblivion, which gave you similar benefits, but also made you take 100% MORE DAMAGE FROME FIRE!
@@rejvaik00 I thought it would be like previous ES games and stunt my regen and I always hated the thought of that as a mage. This video made me realize the amount was rather small. Also I have gotten very good at dodging spell dmg in all games since I've always played as an Altmer weak to it. So getting hit by spells is rare and on the off chance I did get hit, I was fine kiting until I healed up.
9:38 4th hidden effect: If your lets say wear Iron armor then any Iron armor you find will also be weightless. Enjoy carrying 150 Iron/Imperial/Steel armor for 0 weight to your pawnshops ;)
If you’re just starting out and are not too worried about rushing through the game, get the steed stone for the extra carry. My last Playthru I had 25,000 septum’s before I was level 20. Edit: any stone that only gives you one per day is ridiculously stupid unless you want to spend a lot of time just waiting 24 hours
There's an Illusion spell from AE that allows you to unlock chests Expert and below. High magika cost but vastly overshadows the Tower Stones. I typically start with the Warrior Stone so I can get my Smithing skill at least to 50, switch over to the Thief Stone and craft poisons all the way to Alchemy 60, then lastly, the Mage Stone to get Enchanting to 60. Alternatively, if I don't want to waste time grinding my skills before I take on the main quest, I just use the Fortify Restoration exploit to get the first two skills out of way and at least focus on enchanting. Sometimes, I think about how the enemies scale with you and at times, seem vastly better than you and I honestly feel no shame in doing it. I could just lower the difficulty to Apprentice but I tend to just stick with being able to craft armor that can stand toe-to-toe and potions and poisons that can get me out of a bind.
I feel like you are kinda underrating the guardian stones and the lovers stone, while reaching the MR cap without the lordstone requires enchanting, for early/mid game, experience feels a lot more valuable especially if you want to get some of the more annoying skills leveled up that can't really be powerleveled.
The guardian stones are useful in the ‘better than nothing’ sense, considering how early you get access to them and how easy it is. Personally, I play modded, so instead of bonus experience, they grant max of a bar, and an effect to with (warrior is +50 health and 25% better blocking, thief is 50 stamina and reduced falling damage, and mage is 50 magicka and 10% spell cost reduction on all schools) It’s Mundus, a standing stone overhaul if anyone’s interested.
Just get regeneration perk from restoration along with respite. Regen perk regenerates your magicka even in daylight and then you can use a healing spell to give yourself stamina back.
If you guys want to run a necromancer build, stay away from the atronach stone. With the stone active you can actually end up absorbing your conjure spells causing you to spam it 5+ times to summon anything.
I power level a lot, especially enchanting so I use guardian stones a lot, but typically I will use the Lord stone otherwise. I generally prefer the simplest, most straight forward buffs in games. They usually work the best.
Total agree! Atronach Stine might be better at lower levels because of mages, but later only Lord Stone, especially when other magica resistances applied!
Atronach stone can also be used to reach 100% spell absorption with Bretons for one minute a day with their active ability or by magnifying the stone’s effect with the Necromage perk or resto pot effects.
I once screwed around with the ritual stone and had like 30 zombies including 3 or 4 giants...then I went to solitude...and they respawned as living npcs...in the city.
Spiffing Brit has shown that the ability to resurrect everything around you is completely broken. But the simple "improves leveling that set of skills" stones are a smooth pick. But true on that "you can do without it" part. By the time I'm level 35 and leave Whiterun for the first time, I already maxed out smithing, alchemy, enchanting, destruction, restoration, speech, and sneak and am halfway done in conjuration.
It is as if the game doesn't start for you until you're max level'd. Notice how all the stones you mentioned are good at early levels, acting as fillers for skills you haven't yet taken up. Have to admit though, I do the same myself.
Tower: agreed. Lockpicking is fun, intuitive and requires no real help. This could've done so many other things. Trash. Shadow: Long invisibility...until you do ANYTHING or the AI just decides it can see you anyway. Or it drops a blind fireball on you. Blah. Serpent: Eh, a case can be made for this one but...I've never really wished I had it over any other and yeah, it's redundant. Guardians: basic and helpful if you want to specialize in a tree, but if you don't, they're boring. Lover: I like this one because I like to do a bit of everything and it keeps the perks flowing. Still basic, but unrestrictive. Lady: It CAN be nice, but I don't place a lot of faith in regen stats since they shut off while the appropriate bar is going down, i.e. power attacking, taking damage or charging/casting a spell. Apprentice: Todd REALLY should have kept this one like it's old counterparts and made it multiply your max magicka instead of regen, which, as above, freezes during spellcasting anyway. They dropped the ball on this one. Ritual: Ehhhh, a big AOE raise dead CAN be awesome but it's situational. If you can't get a big group together first, it doesn't mean much...and if you've already killed most of the place, you probably don't care about an undead army to finish up. You really gotta set this one up to make it shine...and it's still once a day. Steed: I used to like this one more, but carry capacity isn't hard to come by and armor penalties get mostly mitigated by the right armor perks. The weightless armor is nice but also quite replaceable. Atronach: now this one got kinda cool for Skyrim. It used to just double your max magicka and give a CHANCE to absorb a spell while STOPPING your magicka regen completely. It's much better in Skyrim and any build can enjoy it. Lord: yeah, this one's an easy pick for most if you don't want another one for a specific reason. No downsides, better survivability, nothing to complain about here. Nothing terribly exciting either, but hard to knock. Bethesda REALLY needs to use their brains in ES6 instead of designing a bunch of overlapping mechanics that just obsolete each other a few hours in.
The Steed Stone is a bit better when you're playing with mods, since usually there's more to be gained by wearing pieces of mixed light and heavy armor than committing to either, and so Steed is the best way to not deal with any of the feats that do nothing to make it to weight reduction.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Now see THERE'S a fairly strong argument, though I'd say reducing the weight of light armor is a bit superfluous; the heavy armor weight reduction is the one that matters. I think I'd still prefer the lover's stone though, since if I'm doing such a mixed build (i.e. 99% of the time) it'll keep me leveling faster so I can GET those perks sooner.
Man, I have some spells from a mod that makes any locks below certain difficulties unlock automatically, and even without that, the skeleton key completely outclasses The Tower by itself.
For me, I do not need that as at 20 of lockpick, I just open master lock at first try sometimes as I have very sensitive hands. :3 edited: max at five try to open it. My brother in law asked me help him to open it when he was at 15 of lockpick. I am at 20 by default as I am cute cat!
My least favorite Standing Stone has got to be the Apprentice Stone. I don't see the point in being weaker to magic...when you're the one casting magic. XD My favorite Standing Stones: Atronach, The Lady and The Steed. The Lord Stone is good as well. But my favorites are set in stone. 😎
Actually, it was even easier in Oblivion. You could a lot of lockpicks just playing the game, and just hit force lock until it opened. With skyrim, you have to play the little minigame at all times.
@olivercharles2930 fair point. Tho for me it is always faster to open any lock in skyrim then to click on autopick button in oblivion. Maybe not actually faster, but it at least feels this way
I respect your opinion but I have to respectfully disagree with it I'd personally I'd put The Ritual Stone at number 1 especially when you get the Aetherial Crown and combine it with the Necromancy and Dark Souls perks from the Conjuration tree and Necromage perk from the Restoration tree can really give you a stupidly strong undead army with the only thing you can't resurrect being horses. Bandits, town guards, wolves, trolls, bears heck even dragons can be brought back with The Ritual Stone.
2 things, one, you must understand that the Ritual stone is only used for a VERY specific type of build. Very powerful but I rank the stones off of viability among all builds. Two, I looked it up and there is no possible way to resurrect a dragon in the base game without major glitching or mods.
@@masterneloth huh from what I read about it the only things you can't resurrect are things that are too high a level and horses and fair enough about how you rank them.
@@CaptainB1994 Dragons are just weird for a bunch of reasons, it's not surprising that the ritual just doesn't work on them even if it maybe on paper should. Iirc dragons break if you try and move them outside of the Skyrim Exterior cell, or the equivalent DLC island places in general for like mods and such. Getting them to work at all is some Bethesda Magic alright, scotch tape and all. They probably shouldn't be but, remember this is the game where they zoom the camera to make the werewolf sprint look fast because they had to make it slow so it doesn't like break overworld loading zones and weather. The Dragon Skeleton is also a little weird, but it's a fundamentally different thing so you can cram it in your Naruto fanfic cave if you want to and it should work, no idea if you can res it though, I imagine they wouldn't be worth the effort even if you could. So uh yeah, just assume there's some "wet paint, do not touch" banners over the dragon corpses and accept it as a tragic limitation of the world we live in, and make Lydia put on the humiliating mod dragon scalie suit to live out your dragon master fantasies.
You must be joking. Necromage Vampire build with Atronach Stone is literal god in this game to the point were it feels just too easy even on highest difficulty. It absorbs not only magic attacks but also diseases. Compare to this The Lord Stone feels like a joke even if it has some pretty good mechanics. Ps. I wish that game deves would balance Atronach Stone, since it's just too broken for this game.
Mage stone. Yes, khajiit can "level efficiently" but when khajiit achieves legendary Destruction again he finds casting Thunderbolt to be a pain for forty skill levels or so. And yes khajiit could enchant his gear to reduce the cost of destruction skills to near-zero, but khajiit is not so narrow-minded. Khajiit spreads his enchantments around and casts many spells, as befits the Archmage khajiit is dressed as. Khajiit naturally finds the Lover's stone appealing, but khajiit finds it hard to get a good night's sleep. Much better to store that in a crown, and then benefit from a lover somewhat softer than a pillar of rock.
Not quite useless....personally id find it hella annoying to go back and sleep with my wife every 8 in game hours. In fact the well rwsted/lovers comfort perk tends to be pretty useless in general
Bad news, the stone overwrites the lovers comfort. the trade off is lovers comfort only lasts a few hours in game time, while the stone is constant. Comfort works well if your about to level up skills in/near your family location (such as having alch/smithing/enchanting tools) but it can fall apart when you want to practice combat skills farther away from home. I find if you want fast skill XP in early game you get married quick, take the relevant standing stone (20% in warrior/thief/mage skills) with lovers comfort (15% across the board) and roll hard. Once you get core skills up, you can switch to lovers stone for universal xp gain (while 5% slower, but its still a pretty good pace). Doing this works well until late game when you max most of your skills, at which point the other standing stones start looking pretty good anyways.
Usually no. However, if you put the lover's stone on the aetherial crown, unequip the crown, sleep, and then re-equip the crown, the bonuses will stack. If you combine this with your main standing stone being one of the guardian stones, you can get a +50% skill experience boost for one category and 30% for the other 2. I'm pretty sure these bonuses all stack additively, not multiplicatively. If Guardian stones are multiplicative with lover bonus, then it would be +56% for one skill category and still +30% for the other 2 categories.
@@masterneloth Well, maybe soon there will be some that will translate your audio for you so you can add your own intonations. In fact, I bet that will come quick. Kinda surprised it hasn't already happened, since they can do it with faces for a LONG time.
The lover stone is actually worse than the guardian stones because you can't use it with any of the resting bonuses. So a little worse for power leveling.
You can bypass it if you put the Lover Stone on the Aetherium Crown, take the crown off, get a resting bonus, and then put it back on. Doing a 100 in all skills playthrough right now, found this completely by accident lmao
Fun fact! Here's how garbage Health regeneration boosts are in this game: If you want to heal 5 points per second during combat, you need an enchantment of 920% health regeneration, WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE without exploits.
Tower - honestly, this one is just useless - open locks ability is just invalidated by how easy lockpicking is. Shadow - dubious utility - going invisible once a day is just too situational. Serpent - easily replicated with poisons, spells or enchantments. Guardian stones - they are VERY useful for leveling IF you put your mind to it. They ARE superior to Lover Stone. The reason is simple - Lover Stone conflicts with the "rested", "well rested" and "lover's comfort" bonuses. Guardian stones do not, meaning that with a Lover's Comfort, you can get a 35% xp bonus to one set of skill and 15% to all the others. If you are training specific skills - Guardian Stones are strictly superior. Lover - 15% xp bonus but conflicts with resting bonuses. Useful if you just want to level up faster without thinking about it. Lady - 25% stamina and health regen - it is a simple buff, but useful. HP regen is especially handy for sword and shield characters - as it helps in negating the chip damage that goes through your block. Apprentice - faster regen is fine, but vulnerability to magic is crippling, ESPECIALLY on any difficulty above standard. Magic bypasses armour - and Skyrim has a TON of enemies that do magic damage - ALL THE DRAGONS for instance - the fire/frost breath are Shouts, they count as magic. And unlike Morrowind, Magic Resist covers ALL magic damage, elemental included. This sign is a beginner's trap. 100% magic regen sounds good... But it isn't as good as it looks. You passively regenerate 3% magicka per second out of combat, and 0,99% in combat. Double that and you get... less than 2% per second combat regen. It is not great. You are better off increasing the magicka pool. Ritual - fun if you want to try necromancy without training conjuration. Steed - No movement penalty from armour is ok. Weightless armour - this saves two perk points from armour skill trees. 100 carry weight - fantastic. It is a great stone power. The only problem? Overshadowed by the Lord. Atronach - 50% absorb + Atronach perk from alteration and boom - 80% absorb. VERY potent for spellswords. Enemy mages are your batteries, basically. However... In base game without mods or fan patches... Absorb CAN and WILL absorb your own summoning spells. The Lord - simply the best, no contest. 50 armour is nothing... But magic resist is amazing. 25% + 30% from Alteration perk and you have 55% almost right from the box. Additional 15% from Agent of Mara - 70%. If you are a Breton, you have already maxed your resist. BUT wait, there's more. Since most magic effects are elemental - elemental protection from Block skill can reduce these by further 50% if you are using a shield. This is supremely useful and comes with zero downsides.
The attonach stone is almsot completely useless when fighting anything but mages so that knocks it down wuite a few notches. Add to that that msot of the summons and alteration spells suddenly have a 50% chance to not work because of it and i think its the worst of the magic stones
Honorable mention: the Lady Stone has extra utility in Survival Mode, giving you Regen when you normally wouldn't have it.
also gives vampires regen in the sunlight
After like 12 years of playing skyrim, I had no idea what half of the stones did. I feel so much more insightful
Glad to provide you enlightenment ! 🤩
tbh most of them was pretty useless
There’s only a couple worth using really anyways, so no loss lol
I am a combat mage using swords and gauntlets and boots but wearing mage robes and hoods but I will find the apprentice stone
Number 15, Burger King Foot Stone. The last thing you want in your magical stone is someone's foot fungus but, that might be what you gaet. A Nord erected a stone anonymously, in the night, with a carving of his feet in a bag of lettuce, with the caption 'This is the lettuce you eat in Riverwood.' Admittedly he had shoes on, but that's even worse!
*eats 27 heads of lettuce while Bethesda Staring at you, defiantly*
"This message was brought to you by the Imperial Legion"
The best stone hands down is the one that lets you resurrect all the dead bodies around u once a day. Just wait 24 hours and all the bodies stay around u. By the time u get to whiterun u already have an undead army following you around.
Definitely the best for a Necromancer playthrough or if you’d rather just not play the game and let a legion of undead beasts do it for you 💀
Fun fact: If you get the aetherial crown, have the ritual stone as your "Backup" stone (The one stored in the crown) then unequip and reequip it, you immediately get the power back
TL;DR: Infinite ritual stone casts with no cooldown
As a Breton, you only need 2 points in magic resistance.
25% (Breton bonus) + 25% (Lord Stone) + 15% (Agent of Mara) + 20% (2x 10% from perk) = 85%
The third one is wasted, and it means you only need 50 alteration to reach that level (though the 40 first levels are the slowest to reach, until you can get telekinesis)
The steed stone makes hardcore actually playable.
Lord Stone: Allow me to introduce myself
Steed has been best in all the games I feel. It just helps you so much in traversing the world and hoarding junk as is intended in these games.
Ayyyy I had the 1000th Like, love the channel Master Neloth, you're a legendary mage!
Atronach imho is the most powerful because you get a 50% chance of absorbing spells... that means that you have a 50% chance of not taking damage from magic. If you stack this with abilities from the trees, races, and gear, you can be completely immune to any magic.
Or just drink a stronk fortifie alchemy potion before you touch the stone and get a 98% chance to absorb immediately
Found the power gamer.
A major downside to the atronach stone for me is that you can absorb your own conjure spells.
I like being a necromancer and never take the atronach stone because I end up having to spam my conjure spells upwards of 5-10 times because I keep absorbing the spell.
@@Dinosaurman34 While true, you can RP it like a Necro in training... I can see how that would be an issue.
You could always try to find a mod that fixes that issue too.
@@Dinosaurman34 tru but as a Necro you still can reanimate corpses. cause atronach didn't interference with them. Also wasn't there some aoe spell that give you mana regen with this stone?
The Steed stone all day for me. I’m a hoarder and hate being encumbered in my heavy armor 😅
I completely forgot the atronach stone gave extra magicka, thanks for reminding me!
I go for the lovers stone but if I'm wearing the atherial crown I'll add on the steed stone
My oh my, just yesterday my current character took a rest at Mehrunes Dagon Shrine... Would be a pity not to walk a bit further to the Lord Stone and y'know, transform into a damn dreadnought!
Thanks for the most convenient info Master Neloth!
House Telvanni is here to provide!!!
The Steed Stone is my stone of choise for any warrior build at the beginning when I'm looting for money and resources. Later when I don't need to loot as much, I switch it to the Lord Stone purely for the magic resistance.
Also IMO the difference in speed is noticeable when you're wearing heavy armor and the fact that you can sprint for longer is great. It also gives you more than +100 carrying capacity. Yes, it gives you a flat +100 but since your armor has 0 weight, all that carry weight is also zero, meaning you can carry your armor's worth more in addition to that +100.
Serpent Stone is actually really busted for early game power leveling using the trainer exploit, where you pay a chill (doesn't get mad at you for attacking them once) trainer npc for all 5 lessons, then paralyze them with the stone, then crouch and spam E on them so that the moment they start moving again you get to pickpocket them for free (for some reason even if it says that chance of success is 0%, you still get to take the item without anyone noticing).
The shadow stone would be great if you need stealth but don't have a stealth build. Like the one quest in the civil war that requires sneaking around to blackmail that one jarl.
I kinda despise the stones with redundant effects from a gameplay perspective. They really should have made some stones with cool, unique powers that would make you actually really interested in obtaining them and that add variety/versatility to your characters skills. Couldn't be a Bethesda game without some head scratching game design tho lol.
Nail on the head. They tried hard to keep the old abilities from previous games but they just don't apply to the physics and rules of Skyrim.
Agree that these could be unique abilities, but the common theme between the worst stones in the list were that they were kind of an early game stones that could be exchanged later on. Fillers for your build until you've got the necessary skills up. I'd say it is a bit of a fault in us that we are looking for the endgame only, forgetting how we're supposed to get there.
With the serpent stone is quite useful when doting the Aetherial Crown, it is kinda of annoying, but you can chain paralyze your enemies, and it gives some damage too, so its great to deal with the enemies that can kill you in a tap.
Well, that’s better than the Lord sign from Morrowind and Oblivion, which gave you similar benefits, but also made you take 100% MORE DAMAGE FROME FIRE!
I went and found an armor calculator online. 50 armor is 9% damage reduction. With the 25% magic resist also, that's pretty good for a passive.
I've always only ever used Mage stone since I always play pure magic builds.
But once I discovered Steed and Lord stone, I started using them.
Surprised you wouldn't use the atronach Stone
@@rejvaik00 I thought it would be like previous ES games and stunt my regen and I always hated the thought of that as a mage.
This video made me realize the amount was rather small.
Also I have gotten very good at dodging spell dmg in all games since I've always played as an Altmer weak to it.
So getting hit by spells is rare and on the off chance I did get hit, I was fine kiting until I healed up.
9:38 4th hidden effect: If your lets say wear Iron armor then any Iron armor you find will also be weightless.
Enjoy carrying 150 Iron/Imperial/Steel armor for 0 weight to your pawnshops ;)
I was so confused why you were saying Lord Stone had no downsides, and then I remembered that the fire weakness was removed in Skyrim entirely.
Yer, and it must be nightmare for vampire lord.
great ranking (didn't know about many of these stones lol) thanks for the video!
God bless steed stone being useful when delving into ruins or cave
I love your videos so much lol. Thanks for this one
I thoroughly enjoy having the Lover Stone constantly selected, regardless of playstyle.
If you’re just starting out and are not too worried about rushing through the game, get the steed stone for the extra carry. My last Playthru I had 25,000 septum’s before I was level 20.
Edit: any stone that only gives you one per day is ridiculously stupid unless you want to spend a lot of time just waiting 24 hours
guardian stones are easily #1, and as a semi-expert in the game, i can say that they are the most important part to leveling proficiently lmao
I wouldn't say they are important, but definitely useful.
Sload mating ritual is not the image I wanted today.
There's an Illusion spell from AE that allows you to unlock chests Expert and below. High magika cost but vastly overshadows the Tower Stones. I typically start with the Warrior Stone so I can get my Smithing skill at least to 50, switch over to the Thief Stone and craft poisons all the way to Alchemy 60, then lastly, the Mage Stone to get Enchanting to 60. Alternatively, if I don't want to waste time grinding my skills before I take on the main quest, I just use the Fortify Restoration exploit to get the first two skills out of way and at least focus on enchanting. Sometimes, I think about how the enemies scale with you and at times, seem vastly better than you and I honestly feel no shame in doing it. I could just lower the difficulty to Apprentice but I tend to just stick with being able to craft armor that can stand toe-to-toe and potions and poisons that can get me out of a bind.
I feel like you are kinda underrating the guardian stones and the lovers stone, while reaching the MR cap without the lordstone requires enchanting, for early/mid game, experience feels a lot more valuable especially if you want to get some of the more annoying skills leveled up that can't really be powerleveled.
Atronach stone for life, even if you don’t play a mage build, having a percentage of spells absorbed is still amazing and really helpful
Just reminded me that i still have the mage stone equipped after farming conjuration gotta switch back to warrior
I've always loved the lord stone, not sure why, maybe because the stone itself looks and sounds cool.
The LORD stone.
Serpent Stone has one good use, all other uses are inferior: Use it to paralyze Wulfgar uses Whirlwind Sprint.
The guardian stones are useful in the ‘better than nothing’ sense, considering how early you get access to them and how easy it is.
Personally, I play modded, so instead of bonus experience, they grant max of a bar, and an effect to with (warrior is +50 health and 25% better blocking, thief is 50 stamina and reduced falling damage, and mage is 50 magicka and 10% spell cost reduction on all schools)
It’s Mundus, a standing stone overhaul if anyone’s interested.
NGL I noticed that Triangulating motion with your mouse. Thanks it does help pinpoint stuff on the map. Cheers Master Neloth.
I use the lady stone as a vampire because it negates the day time effects of not being able to regen
Just get regeneration perk from restoration along with respite. Regen perk regenerates your magicka even in daylight and then you can use a healing spell to give yourself stamina back.
If you guys want to run a necromancer build, stay away from the atronach stone.
With the stone active you can actually end up absorbing your conjure spells causing you to spam it 5+ times to summon anything.
only summon it didn't work with reanimation i think
@@peger I personally don’t use the reanimation spells
This issue was fixed with the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch.
I power level a lot, especially enchanting so I use guardian stones a lot, but typically I will use the Lord stone otherwise. I generally prefer the simplest, most straight forward buffs in games. They usually work the best.
Total agree! Atronach Stine might be better at lower levels because of mages, but later only Lord Stone, especially when other magica resistances applied!
Atronach stone can also be used to reach 100% spell absorption with Bretons for one minute a day with their active ability or by magnifying the stone’s effect with the Necromage perk or resto pot effects.
I once screwed around with the ritual stone and had like 30 zombies including 3 or 4 giants...then I went to solitude...and they respawned as living npcs...in the city.
Pff, it must be bug and so funny!
I ran across the Lord Stone by accident, read its perks and activated it, and didn't look back.
Spiffing Brit has shown that the ability to resurrect everything around you is completely broken.
But the simple "improves leveling that set of skills" stones are a smooth pick. But true on that "you can do without it" part. By the time I'm level 35 and leave Whiterun for the first time, I already maxed out smithing, alchemy, enchanting, destruction, restoration, speech, and sneak and am halfway done in conjuration.
Definitely gonna go grab the Lord Stone for my Mage build, now.
"And if it's an edge you want..." bruv I nearly cut myself on all the edge that is that Daedric armour, sheesh! No more edge needed.
It is as if the game doesn't start for you until you're max level'd. Notice how all the stones you mentioned are good at early levels, acting as fillers for skills you haven't yet taken up. Have to admit though, I do the same myself.
I'd give the lady and apprentice stones a boost of you're a vampire. Being able to regen at all during the day is nice early on
I use the guardian stones to max out everything first then use the atronach.
Tower: agreed. Lockpicking is fun, intuitive and requires no real help. This could've done so many other things. Trash.
Shadow: Long invisibility...until you do ANYTHING or the AI just decides it can see you anyway. Or it drops a blind fireball on you. Blah.
Serpent: Eh, a case can be made for this one but...I've never really wished I had it over any other and yeah, it's redundant.
Guardians: basic and helpful if you want to specialize in a tree, but if you don't, they're boring.
Lover: I like this one because I like to do a bit of everything and it keeps the perks flowing. Still basic, but unrestrictive.
Lady: It CAN be nice, but I don't place a lot of faith in regen stats since they shut off while the appropriate bar is going down, i.e. power attacking, taking damage or charging/casting a spell.
Apprentice: Todd REALLY should have kept this one like it's old counterparts and made it multiply your max magicka instead of regen, which, as above, freezes during spellcasting anyway. They dropped the ball on this one.
Ritual: Ehhhh, a big AOE raise dead CAN be awesome but it's situational. If you can't get a big group together first, it doesn't mean much...and if you've already killed most of the place, you probably don't care about an undead army to finish up. You really gotta set this one up to make it shine...and it's still once a day.
Steed: I used to like this one more, but carry capacity isn't hard to come by and armor penalties get mostly mitigated by the right armor perks. The weightless armor is nice but also quite replaceable.
Atronach: now this one got kinda cool for Skyrim. It used to just double your max magicka and give a CHANCE to absorb a spell while STOPPING your magicka regen completely. It's much better in Skyrim and any build can enjoy it.
Lord: yeah, this one's an easy pick for most if you don't want another one for a specific reason. No downsides, better survivability, nothing to complain about here. Nothing terribly exciting either, but hard to knock.
Bethesda REALLY needs to use their brains in ES6 instead of designing a bunch of overlapping mechanics that just obsolete each other a few hours in.
The Steed Stone is a bit better when you're playing with mods, since usually there's more to be gained by wearing pieces of mixed light and heavy armor than committing to either, and so Steed is the best way to not deal with any of the feats that do nothing to make it to weight reduction.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Now see THERE'S a fairly strong argument, though I'd say reducing the weight of light armor is a bit superfluous; the heavy armor weight reduction is the one that matters. I think I'd still prefer the lover's stone though, since if I'm doing such a mixed build (i.e. 99% of the time) it'll keep me leveling faster so I can GET those perks sooner.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290true, as I do mix light and heavy armor.
Jesus, Neloth! They're minerals, not rocks!
The unofficial skyrim patch fixes the conjuration bug, making Atronach #1 easily.
I disagree. Its a powerful buff, to be sure
But i much prefer the extra carry weight from the steed stone
Man, I have some spells from a mod that makes any locks below certain difficulties unlock automatically, and even without that, the skeleton key completely outclasses The Tower by itself.
Ritual and Lord are my go to stones! :D
Haven’t even watched the video, steed stone. That’s all I need is the extra carry weight and I still somehow know it from memory XD
You should watch the steed stone part of my video. You’d be surprised what other benefits that stone carries lol
The first one is true, I can open any lock at level 1, sometimes I even open the expert and master locks at the first attempt
For me, I do not need that as at 20 of lockpick, I just open master lock at first try sometimes as I have very sensitive hands. :3 edited: max at five try to open it. My brother in law asked me help him to open it when he was at 15 of lockpick. I am at 20 by default as I am cute cat!
My least favorite Standing Stone has got to be the Apprentice Stone. I don't see the point in being weaker to magic...when you're the one casting magic. XD My favorite Standing Stones: Atronach, The Lady and The Steed. The Lord Stone is good as well. But my favorites are set in stone. 😎
Lockpocking in this game is easy...unlike what it was in Oblivion
Actually, it was even easier in Oblivion. You could a lot of lockpicks just playing the game, and just hit force lock until it opened. With skyrim, you have to play the little minigame at all times.
@olivercharles2930 fair point. Tho for me it is always faster to open any lock in skyrim then to click on autopick button in oblivion. Maybe not actually faster, but it at least feels this way
Yer, I used auto all time.
Tower Stone supremacy
Only Dres lovers choose the Tower Stone!
8:39 i dont think thats the word you were looking for lol
That’s EXACTLY the word I was looking for! 😎
My favorite standing stone is the ritual stone because of the power i get from it
I power level so I put lovers stone in the aetherial crown and rotate through the Guardian stones
Yer, be sure remove that crown before you change stone as it will be bit annoying to return to that lover stone to activate it again
@bluedarkness7125 I do and I take it off to sleep to gain rested bonus too
Can you reanimate a troll or giant with the ritual stone?
Lover stone in the beginning then lord stone
I respect your opinion but I have to respectfully disagree with it I'd personally I'd put The Ritual Stone at number 1 especially when you get the Aetherial Crown and combine it with the Necromancy and Dark Souls perks from the Conjuration tree and Necromage perk from the Restoration tree can really give you a stupidly strong undead army with the only thing you can't resurrect being horses. Bandits, town guards, wolves, trolls, bears heck even dragons can be brought back with The Ritual Stone.
Dragons can be brought back with it?
2 things, one, you must understand that the Ritual stone is only used for a VERY specific type of build. Very powerful but I rank the stones off of viability among all builds.
Two, I looked it up and there is no possible way to resurrect a dragon in the base game without major glitching or mods.
@@masterneloth huh from what I read about it the only things you can't resurrect are things that are too high a level and horses and fair enough about how you rank them.
@@CaptainB1994
Dragons are just weird for a bunch of reasons, it's not surprising that the ritual just doesn't work on them even if it maybe on paper should.
Iirc dragons break if you try and move them outside of the Skyrim Exterior cell, or the equivalent DLC island places in general for like mods and such. Getting them to work at all is some Bethesda Magic alright, scotch tape and all. They probably shouldn't be but, remember this is the game where they zoom the camera to make the werewolf sprint look fast because they had to make it slow so it doesn't like break overworld loading zones and weather.
The Dragon Skeleton is also a little weird, but it's a fundamentally different thing so you can cram it in your Naruto fanfic cave if you want to and it should work, no idea if you can res it though, I imagine they wouldn't be worth the effort even if you could.
So uh yeah, just assume there's some "wet paint, do not touch" banners over the dragon corpses and accept it as a tragic limitation of the world we live in, and make Lydia put on the humiliating mod dragon scalie suit to live out your dragon master fantasies.
With the d,c you can get two stones. So which pair is best for a warrior?
You must be joking. Necromage Vampire build with Atronach Stone is literal god in this game to the point were it feels just too easy even on highest difficulty. It absorbs not only magic attacks but also diseases. Compare to this The Lord Stone feels like a joke even if it has some pretty good mechanics.
Ps. I wish that game deves would balance Atronach Stone, since it's just too broken for this game.
Omfg is the atronoch the reason why my conjugation spells don’t work 😭 I thought my game was bugged
:3
Mage stone. Yes, khajiit can "level efficiently" but when khajiit achieves legendary Destruction again he finds casting Thunderbolt to be a pain for forty skill levels or so. And yes khajiit could enchant his gear to reduce the cost of destruction skills to near-zero, but khajiit is not so narrow-minded. Khajiit spreads his enchantments around and casts many spells, as befits the Archmage khajiit is dressed as.
Khajiit naturally finds the Lover's stone appealing, but khajiit finds it hard to get a good night's sleep. Much better to store that in a crown, and then benefit from a lover somewhat softer than a pillar of rock.
Stowyne lol the way he said it
The Ritual
The EXP buffs
The Steed and Lord
The Atronach, Maybe
No stone
The other ones
THIS IS WHY MY INVOCATIONS DON'T WORK AND I THOUGHT IT WAS DUE TO A BUG
Liking everything I see
the lovers stone only emulates the bonus you get from sleeping with your wife/husband, so if you're already hitched, this stone is useless
You aren't married at the start of the game.
I mean unless you're doing crazy mod stuff
Not quite useless....personally id find it hella annoying to go back and sleep with my wife every 8 in game hours. In fact the well rwsted/lovers comfort perk tends to be pretty useless in general
@@sillyking1991yer, it will be better if it at least 16 hr, as I usually sleep by 8 hr for role playing.
to be honest I completely forgot these were even a feature in the game and I have no intention to remember.
Steed is the best
Well I still think the atronach stone is the best. And for this conjuration thing: Install the unofficial Skyrim Patch and your conjuration works.
13:36 or become vampire with necromancer perk :D
Lord or Atronach
Atronach Stone + Transmutation perk + Miraak's Drip. Ah yes, the "Magic isn't real, you idiot" build.
Does the bonus from the Lover's Stone stack with the bonus from sleeping with one's wife or husband?
I believe they do! Think that’ll give you a 30% bonus for everything
Bad news, the stone overwrites the lovers comfort. the trade off is lovers comfort only lasts a few hours in game time, while the stone is constant.
Comfort works well if your about to level up skills in/near your family location (such as having alch/smithing/enchanting tools) but it can fall apart when you want to practice combat skills farther away from home.
I find if you want fast skill XP in early game you get married quick, take the relevant standing stone (20% in warrior/thief/mage skills) with lovers comfort (15% across the board) and roll hard. Once you get core skills up, you can switch to lovers stone for universal xp gain (while 5% slower, but its still a pretty good pace).
Doing this works well until late game when you max most of your skills, at which point the other standing stones start looking pretty good anyways.
@@masterneloth I suspected all along that they don't stack, and right now I'm watching a video that comfirms that that's the case.
@@Eric-W Thanks. I suspected this.
Usually no. However, if you put the lover's stone on the aetherial crown, unequip the crown, sleep, and then re-equip the crown, the bonuses will stack. If you combine this with your main standing stone being one of the guardian stones, you can get a +50% skill experience boost for one category and 30% for the other 2. I'm pretty sure these bonuses all stack additively, not multiplicatively. If Guardian stones are multiplicative with lover bonus, then it would be +56% for one skill category and still +30% for the other 2 categories.
I prefer the millstones in the grainmills dotted around Skyrim.
Lover stone for massive grinding xp, then lord stone.
I always take the steed stone
I mostly play as a necromancer so you know which one i roll with
Gotta get you an AI generated voice-over in Neloth's voice.
I considered it briefly but I honestly find the AI generated voice’s to be lifeless and annoying and it would take away from my aesthetic.
@@masterneloth Well, maybe soon there will be some that will translate your audio for you so you can add your own intonations. In fact, I bet that will come quick. Kinda surprised it hasn't already happened, since they can do it with faces for a LONG time.
The lover stone is actually worse than the guardian stones because you can't use it with any of the resting bonuses. So a little worse for power leveling.
You can bypass it if you put the Lover Stone on the Aetherium Crown, take the crown off, get a resting bonus, and then put it back on. Doing a 100 in all skills playthrough right now, found this completely by accident lmao
You think you're tough?
Play a melee character with apprentice stone.
Lord. Lord all the way.
Before I watch STEED STONE >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
i got some stones you can love you know what i mean 😎
Fun fact! Here's how garbage Health regeneration boosts are in this game:
If you want to heal 5 points per second during combat, you need an enchantment of 920% health regeneration, WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE without exploits.
I don’t pay taxes either!
Well done my friend!
Tower - honestly, this one is just useless - open locks ability is just invalidated by how easy lockpicking is.
Shadow - dubious utility - going invisible once a day is just too situational.
Serpent - easily replicated with poisons, spells or enchantments.
Guardian stones - they are VERY useful for leveling IF you put your mind to it. They ARE superior to Lover Stone. The reason is simple - Lover Stone conflicts with the "rested", "well rested" and "lover's comfort" bonuses. Guardian stones do not, meaning that with a Lover's Comfort, you can get a 35% xp bonus to one set of skill and 15% to all the others. If you are training specific skills - Guardian Stones are strictly superior.
Lover - 15% xp bonus but conflicts with resting bonuses. Useful if you just want to level up faster without thinking about it.
Lady - 25% stamina and health regen - it is a simple buff, but useful. HP regen is especially handy for sword and shield characters - as it helps in negating the chip damage that goes through your block.
Apprentice - faster regen is fine, but vulnerability to magic is crippling, ESPECIALLY on any difficulty above standard. Magic bypasses armour - and Skyrim has a TON of enemies that do magic damage - ALL THE DRAGONS for instance - the fire/frost breath are Shouts, they count as magic. And unlike Morrowind, Magic Resist covers ALL magic damage, elemental included.
This sign is a beginner's trap. 100% magic regen sounds good... But it isn't as good as it looks. You passively regenerate 3% magicka per second out of combat, and 0,99% in combat. Double that and you get... less than 2% per second combat regen. It is not great. You are better off increasing the magicka pool.
Ritual - fun if you want to try necromancy without training conjuration.
Steed - No movement penalty from armour is ok. Weightless armour - this saves two perk points from armour skill trees. 100 carry weight - fantastic. It is a great stone power. The only problem? Overshadowed by the Lord.
Atronach - 50% absorb + Atronach perk from alteration and boom - 80% absorb. VERY potent for spellswords. Enemy mages are your batteries, basically. However... In base game without mods or fan patches... Absorb CAN and WILL absorb your own summoning spells.
The Lord - simply the best, no contest. 50 armour is nothing... But magic resist is amazing. 25% + 30% from Alteration perk and you have 55% almost right from the box. Additional 15% from Agent of Mara - 70%. If you are a Breton, you have already maxed your resist.
BUT wait, there's more. Since most magic effects are elemental - elemental protection from Block skill can reduce these by further 50% if you are using a shield. This is supremely useful and comes with zero downsides.
Ritual Stone isn't even fair 😂
The attonach stone is almsot completely useless when fighting anything but mages so that knocks it down wuite a few notches. Add to that that msot of the summons and alteration spells suddenly have a 50% chance to not work because of it and i think its the worst of the magic stones
Less cocaine.
atronach is busted