UESP Forums

I hate to fail a quest, so I always make at least three saves of my current game-- (1) before speaking with a given person to get a quest from them, so I can try for a different quest if the one offered is something I have no hope of completing*; (2) after accepting a quest but before entering the specified dungeon, so I can go through it again if I can't find the quest objective within the specified number of days; and (3) while questing inside the dungeon. (*I know I can just refuse an offered quest, but I don't like turning down a quest giver, so I prefer to reload and try for a different quest. Also, I'm playing the original game, not Daggerfall Unity, so I can't just select a quest from a list of all the possible quests that a given person can offer.)

The other day I was sent to a dungeon to destroy an atronach that some bumbling fool conjured up while fooling around with magic-- a quest I've done numerous times, both for the Mages Guild and for the Fighters Guild. This particular dungeon was filled with Vampire Ancients, so I had to do a lot of resting to recover my spell points. The quest had to be done within 8 days, and it took 2 days to travel recklessly from the Tulune Fighters Guild to the dungeon, so that left me only 4 days to explore the dungeon, find, and destroy the atronach.

I couldn't find the atronach anywhere, despite exploring every nook and cranny (that I could find) in the dungeon multiple times. Eventually I was about to run out of time, so I went back to the Fighters Guild in the hope that I'd somehow killed the atronach without realizing it or remembering it (since I explored the dungeon over a period of several days, during 3 separate play sessions, with gaps of 2 or more days between each session). I forgot it was going to take 2 days to get back to Tulune, so I arrived a day late and failed the quest. Nothing was said about it, but when I went to talk to the quest giver he offered me a quest to recover a Daedric something-or-other for some person and said that this person would reward me with Chrysamere. I don't think the version I'm running includes the additional CompUSA quests, and this quest didn't seem to match the ones described in the UESPWiki.

Anyway, after reading up on Chrysamere and deciding that I didn't really care about obtaining it-- I'm quite happy with my Daedric Dai-Katana, thank you very much-- I decided to reload from before I entered the dungeon where the atronach was said to be and try again.

I was able to explore and clear the dungeon a bit quicker this time, having become familiar with it, but still could not find the atronach. Frustrated, I started running around trying all of the gray torches on the walls to see if they activated a portal that didn't seem to do anything. There were also a couple of boxes on the floor that I hadn't tried clicking on, but I was having trouble finding them again. I clicked on one torch and it slid to the side! From what I could see on the map, this caused a small room-- really just the dead end of a corridor-- to rise up and reveal two side corridors leading to two rooms I hadn't known about. In one of the rooms I was attacked by an Ice Atronach, but it didn't say anything when I killed it. Since that was the only atronach I'd seen in the whole dungeon, and I was nearly out of time, I decided to return to the Tulune Fighters Guild to see if I'd completed the quest.

It turns out that I must have failed the quest anyway, despite returning before the deadline, so perhaps there was another hidden area I hadn't found, or a way to activate that inactive portal. I decided not to bother trying a third time, but now I know about the sliding torch that reveals the two hidden rooms at the end of that dead end. I've encountered that dead end in the same dungeon module in many other dungeons, so this should be very helpful with exploring more dungeons in the future!

The dungeon module in question is one where there are four little square rooms arranged like a grid and connected by short corridors. It would be like drawing a 3-by-3 array of dots and connecting them with horizontal and vertical lines to form a grid, but some of the places where dots would be are really just curves where a given corridor turns 90 degrees. On the eastern side of the module is a very short corridor and a doorway that leads to another module, and close by that is another corridor that slopes upward to a dead end. The gray torch on the wall near the bottom of that sloping corridor slides the dead end upward to reveal the hidden rooms. Another gray torch by the revealed rooms slides the entire sloped corridor upward so you can't get out until you operate that torch a second time and slide the corridor back down into place.

Do you remember the name and location of that dungeon, or could you load an old save to check? I've been thinking about compiling a list of objects that act as switches (including screenshots) and I could look up which dungeon block includes that switch.

It was The Citadel of Hearthham in Tulune County.

The switch works in other dungeons that include the same module, as well as dungeons which include a similar-but-different module where the NE corner of the module is missing-- that is, the corridor which normally curves around to form the NE corner is replaced by two deadends, one in the northern part and one in the eastern part. But the upward-sloping corridor which goes from the eastern corridor to a point above the center of the module still hides an area that's accessible by sliding the torch on the wall near the eastern end of that sloping corridor.

Barezar's Barrow in Tulune County is one of the dungeons that includes the variant module, and the hidden area is much more extensive than the hidden area in The Citadel of Hearthham.