The Great Lift at Raldbthar is a separate entrance to the Dwemer ruin Raldbthar, southwest of Windhelm. It’s a mechanical elevator that drops straight down into Blackreach, the enormous cavern hidden beneath northern Skyrim. Like its siblings, the Great Lift at Alftand and the Great Lift at Mzinchaleft, it starts out stubbornly locked.
What you’ll find
- A locked iron gate at the surface entrance.
- A lever beside the gate on the inside, which opens it once you arrive from below.
- The lift itself, carrying you between the surface and Blackreach.
How to unlock it
Blackreach is only reachable through Raldbthar, Mzinchaleft or Alftand, and only with Septimus Signus’ Attunement Sphere, which you receive during Discerning the Transmundane. Work your way down into Blackreach, take this lift up to the surface and pull the lever. After that you can enter from outside whenever you travel here, and the lift gets its own marker on the world map, separate from Raldbthar.
Quests
Discerning the Transmundane – you need it started to get the Attunement Sphere and open the way to Blackreach.
Tips
Open this lift as soon as you can: it saves you from slogging through the whole of Raldbthar every time you want to visit Blackreach. Don’t get too comfortable, though – if you stay away for a while, the gate may reset to closed and you’ll have to go through the main ruin to open it again. The lift has a reputation for sometimes trapping players in an endless arrival loop that overwrites autosaves, so make a manual save before riding it. A little paranoia beats losing three hours of progress.
Nearby
Closest places covered on TamrielSaga: Pale Stormcloak Camp, Raldbthar, Irkngthand, Bronze Water Cave, Uttering Hills Cave.
Location data (hold, map position, editor ID) read from the Skyrim game files; details checked against community wiki articles and summarised in our own words.