Great Lift at Alftand

The Great Lift at Alftand is an ancient Dwemer Ruin in .
==Description==
The Great Lift at Alftand is an ancient Dwemer mechanical lift that connects to Blackreach. The iron gate will initially be locked and can only be opened from the inside. This can be achieved once the Dragonborn has access to Blackreach. From Blackreach, the Dragonborn can ride the Great Lift at Alftand up to the surface and pull a lever to open the gate (the lever may be difficult to see, depending on user settings. It is right next to the door, above the cogs), after which the lift can be entered from the outside anytime it is traveled to and will appear on the World Map, separate from Alftand.
Blackreach can only be accessed through the ruins of Raldbthar, Mzinchaleft, or Alftand with Septimus Signus' Attunement Sphere.
Note: This is a good place to exit Blackreach when the Dragonborn's inventory is full but there is more exploring to do. Push the Activate Button on the top of the huge Dwarven helmet to lower the bars. Ride the lift to the surface, empty the inventory, and return.
==Quests==
*Discerning the Transmundane
==Gallery==
Great Lift At Alftand Inside.jpg|Inside Blackreach
==Bugs==
* Especially prone to "locking up," trapping the Dragonborn in a repeating cycle of arriving at either the surface or Blackreach. This overwrites all the autosaves, so it is a good idea to save before activating this lift.
**Pressing all the buttons and then clicking on the Xbox button and leaving the menu open may break the cycle.
**Repeatedly pressing the Favorites button may break the cycle.
**Disabling auto-saves may break the cycle.
** On PC using the console commands tscr (toggle script processing) followed by the teleport command (coc <LocationID>, for example coc riverwood to go to Riverwood) will break the cycle. Be sure to reenable script toggling by entering tscr a second time.
* The game may hang up while taking the lift to the surface, displaying a black screen. This may repeat until the game is restarted or a previous save loaded or by quickly opening the menu or the favorite menu and waiting 15 to 30 seconds it should normalize (tested on XBOX360)
* The gate may close itself at any point after being opened and returned to. When this happens, the other gates will close as well and enemies in the ruins and Blackreach will respawn.
**It is possible to circumvent this problem and still get into Blackreach. By standing against the gate of one of the above-ground lifts and casting Summon Arvak, it is possible to get through the gate by mounting and then dismounting Arvak. You can then use the lever to open the gate and descend into Blackreach. Note: If it worked correctly, Arvak will appear to be halfway through the gate.
**Another way to circumvent this is by standing at the gate and holding a plate in front of you and running into it. You must move the plate around to find the correct spots that allow you to move through the gate.
** Stand outside of the Lift and type tcl into the console, to turn collision off, in order to bypass the gate to the entrance (make sure nothing is selected). Then, as soon as you are in the entrance, type in tcl again into the console. Then activate the lever in order to open the gate.
* Even after opening the gate to the lift from inside, traveling away from and back to the lift results in the gate being closed, and Blackreach must be accessed the long way through Alftand.
==See also==
*Great Lift at Raldbthar
*Great Lift at Mzinchaleft
==Appearances==
*
de:Großer Fahrstuhl in Alftand
es:Gran elevador de Alftand
ru:Главный подъёмник Альфтанда
Category:Skyrim: Winterhold Hold Locations
Category:Skyrim: Blackreach Locations