We saw in the demo that the guardian stones were a set of 3. These particular stones were basic versions found early in the game and as far as Todd has said only augment the experience gain for the 3 'archtypes' skills. If they have other effects we just don't know, we also don't know if the other guardian stones will work in the same manner.

It is possible that all the guardian stones will be skill enhancing, that is each has a different set of skills that it 'improves' or increases skill gain in. Since there are ones for 'Mage' 'Theif' and 'Warrior' there may be some for ex. 'Paladin' which has 1h/block/restoration as its tagged skills. I am hoping this is not the case but it is a possibility.

One question I found myself asking was, "Are we going to find all the guardian stones in sets of 3?". Will each instance of guardian stones be set on a 'node' like the ones in the demo? It would be good to give people choices whenever they found the stones, but on the other hand having some stones be all by themselves would increase the travel time between finding them all and make it a bit harder process to find just the right one.

Another thing I have speculated on was the usefulness of these stones. Will their effects ever grant major or minor powers? Will there be Guardian Stone specific perks that act like birthsigns (Steed for example could be 5% faster movement). If they are, in fact, like birthsigns I would expect there to be around 21-24 including the 3 we know about. If they are just skill enhancers then I believe there to be far less(10 max), as there would be overlap.

The ones we know about, while mundane, could be extremely useful. After one has leveled up a considerable amount in their 'class' skills and wants to eek out extra levels from their 'minor' skills taking one of these would ease the pain of leveling a low skill at a high level. Taking a 'Mage' stone as mid-level warrior would decrease the time that you felt gimped with destruction compared to your sword/shield.

Well, each of the archetype stones represent the 6 skills of the archetype. and it seems like they are trying to get people to focus on one rather than mixing them. I can't say for sure, but I, personally, don't think there will be stones for specific "classes", such as paladin as you said, or spellsword.

It said "The Guardian Stones discovered" when he got there. Does this mean there is only 1 place with Guardian Stones? I mean, it says THE Guardian Stones.

Pure speculation, but each skill has a constellation, so it would make sense to have a stone for each skill. A stone specific perk might be more interesting than a fortify, but I personally liked the greater powers from OB's doomstones, so a set of one a day powers ,one for each skill, would be ok.

As far as I remember, Todd said something along the lines of
?These three are kind of the basic ones?

So, I reckon there are other un-basic ones.
:D

It's already been stated that you will find them while exploring. So that's obviously not true.

Maybe the "The Guardian Stones discovered" means that those particular stones are part of a quest to initiate the player to the idea of guardian stones.

I don't like the idea of your leveling being skewed like that. How is that 'be who you want to be'?

Exact quote from the E3 gameplay demo:


So yes, I'm sure there will be some more specialized ones, and ideally some more interesting ones akin to the Atronach/Apprentice birthsigns that augment some of your abilities at the cost of others. I would dearly hope so, because I love roleplaying characters with disadvantages. I absolutely loathe the "don't worry about planning, just do what you want and we'll barely penalize you this time because we don't want people ragequitting the game after picking the wrong skills" mindset. :rolleyes:

You can choose either of the three or none at all.

Because you can choose to ignore the guardian stones. Or choose a specific one to tailor your character. It's not predetermined at the start of the game and can be switched whenever you want to switch them. Id define that as being who you want to be.

In the in-game book The Firmament it mentions the Warrior, Mage, and Thief signs as being guardians of the other birthsigns. Each had... three signs under it, I think.

Could be the source of the name "The Guardian Stones" since these three are the guardian constellations. I guess we'll know for certain when and if we see whether the other groups (assuming they are in threes as well) are grouped according to their guardians.

So....they seem like ion stones from baldur's gate.

They definitly seem better than hauling around a balance scale everywhere you went LOL

that's sounds logical, so it can't be that.