I prefer the Lover Stone myself, carry weight is nice but money is so easy to come by when you have somewhat liberal notions of ownership.

ritual has saved my thief who uses no magic many times over, but i want that extra carrying capacity. decisions decisions

It's great for heavy armor users who don't want the [censored] hand to hand and falling damage bonuses.

I do use heavy armor so that may be why I like it so much

I haven't found a single [censored] stone in this game. Can someone tell me the location of a good one for an assassin please.

Not only does it add +100 carrying weight, there's no movement penalty with armor. I can wear a full set of Daedric armor and not be slowed down at all.

I find the Atronach Stone useful for my, albeit warrior/thief, because of the magic absorption. It's somewhat easier to find, going north from Shor Stone down the cliffs, it's in the middle of the bad lands, sort of half-way between there and Dark Water Crossing.

Meh, I rarely every become over encumbered seeing as I don't carry around 13 armor sets 42 swords and enough ingredients to make mother nature envious.

I'm a fan of the Lady Stone. I picked that one up early on and haven't switched since. Of course I've only found a few stones anyways.

-edit-
The Ritual Stone would have been awesome if it wasn't once a day. I was massively disappointed when I found that out. If it were once every half hour or something I'd likely use it.

Steed stone is good for heavy armor users before a certain perk is reached, else wise it's really just a +100 carry capacity which doesn't mean all that much in this game, unless you literally have to loot every little thing (even just looting the valuable stuff I feel like I own half of skyrim's septims/gold).

Atronach is good for mages who already have some magicka regeneration bonus either via equiped items or restoration perks, it also stacks with Alterations effect and Breton's once-a-day (which is essentially invulnerability to magic)

Lord is good for meleers since it gives some defense against both magic and physical attacks.

Mage, Thief, Warrior, Lover stones are good for leveling faster for Mages, Thieves, Warriors and Hybrids respectively.

Shadow Stone is a great once-a-day escape if you don't level illusion (pure thief build for example)

Ritual Stone is a great necromancer stone, mass corpse resurrect once-a-day.

Serpent Stone is an okay assassin/poisoner stone for it's long ranged damaging paralyze effect, tho once a day

Tower stone is a bit pointless because of how easy it is to get lockpicks in this game

Lady Stone is pointless because the regeneration effects do almost nothing in battle and out of battle you regenerate Health/Magicka fast enough already

Apprentice stone is the worst since again Magicka regeneration doesn't help in battle and it gives you a massive 100% weakness to magicka.

I tend to prefer the Steed stone, but then I'm a hopeless pack-rat and want all the carrying capacity I can get because I don't use companions. Even without that, several of the other stones are pretty much useless for me anyway due to how I build. That said, I do have use for the Lord stone until I get my capped Magic Resistance enchantments, since even though I play sneaky types there are times when I get blasted anyway.

I've been toying with the idea of a character who stacks the Atronach stone with the +30 Absorb perk from Alteration; since I typically get the three ranks of resistance from that tree anyway it would only be a couple more perks, however my builds tend to be pretty tight already.

Lord Stone #1

Atronach~ It absorbs any kind of magic, even enchanted weapons, staff's ect, dragon shout attacks and i believe diseases too *considering it activates when non elemental but diseased animals attack me*~ And when it activates all the damage done nullified but gained back as magicka... :wub:

Not even the first three near riverwood? hmy:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Standing_Stone

Only time I used the +100 carry capacity from Steed Stone, was when I killed 2 dragons at the same time and didn't wanted to leave dragon bones/scales (I don't even know why I'm collecting them).

If 300 carry capacity isn't enough for you while you're exploring dungeons, then you're doing it wrong. Just take the gold, don't take armors/weapons unless they are ebony/glass or higher, or have some really expensive enchant.

If you keep looting every armor you see, you'll fill your capacity far too soon and will have to go to a city to unload everything you have after a small cave. If you just loot the worthy stuff, you'll go through caves/dungeons faster and will fill your inventory with far more expensive stuff.

are you lot forgetting that money is useless in this game. especially at higher levels say 25+. you dont really need to buy anything cos you can find better stuff by looting or abuse the crafting system and make the game boring for yourself.

So i say the lord stone for its magic resistance. 50 armor is like 6% reduction which is poo.
2nd best would be the steed...cos there isnt really anything else..lol

Tower stone is the sh1ttist
yet its at such a cool location

and all the once-a-day stones are crap.

I'm still surprised that some people think the Lord stone is better than the Atronach for magic resist.

cos the absorb spell feature is not explained well at all.
its not on uesp or wikia.

50% absorb? 50% chance to absorb and nerf completely? 50% of the damage absorbed? 50% magicka from the spell absorbed?
come on what does it even mean.

but since quite a few people say absorb>resist so i guess i'll switch to atronach

That's the one. It also works against dragon shouts and poison.

It depends. Generally yes but not always because more MR is additive and MA is multiplicative and difficult to obtain.

If you have the Atronach Alternation perk, Atronach Stone is always better.

If not, and your MR is from 41 to 69, Lord is better.

I prefer the Ritual Stone, as fighting Drauger get hectic and having an entire army would help against those Death overlords!