Hi, I'm stuck trying to reach the next area after the Alftand ruined tower. I exit the door to Skyrim and can't figure out where to go. I see some catwalks above me but I don't know how to get there, and I don't knoow if I am supposed to go the glacial ruins or where. I can't go up the mountain at all.

If I recall it right you're supposed to go down into the glacial ruins, you'll get in through there.

I chased this one for a while! Go into the glacial ruins, you'll get to blackreach through there. I don't know why the arrow isn't helpful on this one.

Because it can't indicate ground height.

To get to the ruins you have to go up to go down; head back southward and you'll see a hillside, take that up and you'll have access to a clifftop camp near an elevator. This elevator is barred from the inside, so you have to make your way down the scaffolding until it ends, at which point you'll see the entrance to the ruins. WARNING: if you go in without sneaking, you may be jumped immediately after entering; there's a nutcase a short way down the hall who roams a bit, can see the entrance from one end of his 'patrol' route, and, more often than not, attacks on sight. It's a pretty easy fight if you have good gear, though.

One crazy cat suffering from skooma withdrawl shouldn't pose a problem for anyone

You wouldn't think so, but he hits pretty hard for his level and you can get this quest at a pretty low level via the Main Quest line, so those trying it at that point should be prepared for a fight.

Valid point!

I really love the experience of the dwemer ruins , but for the love of god , don't ever try exactly following a quest marker. I now find myeslf for the majority completely ignoring the quest marker and just go off instinct. There's just simply way too many paths on different levels you'll never just make a beeline for something the little indicator might be pointing to , because it may be pointing at a door that's 150 feet above or below you.

Heh, yeah, attempting to follow a quest marker inside a multilevel Dwemer ruin is a recipe for a massive headache. There are times when it's useful, although I mostly use it for orientation purposes; many passages in such ruins have more twists than a barrel of pretzels, and it's not always obvious which turn you should actually be taking.

I've a question about the end of this area, the Alftand Cathedral. I've made it all the way to the elevator that takes you up but i have not tried to pull the lever yet because I've not completed the [puzzle] in front of the barred doors to the elevator. When I click on the table with the neon blue balls, I get a note that I don't have the correct item. I went through this entire area very carefully and cannot imagine what i missed.

Does anyone know what I'm missing?

You need the bronze baseball from the mad hermit (Septimus) in the ice field.
(You get directed to him by Uraj at the College of Winterhold, but talking to Uraj is optional afaict.)

Thank you didymus for the reply. I'm stuck in the elevator at the moment and it seems like I might lose a large portion of my hard work getting here because I didn't have this item before entering Alftand's dwemer ruin. This really stinks, I can't get out because i had to drop from a ledge on the route and there's no way to get back out. Oh well, live and learn.

I don't understand how you can be stuck in the elevator, unless you mean using it causes the dreaded flickering-light-of-paralysis bug upon hitting ground level. In which case I ~coc Whiterun, but that only works on PC, of course.

Once you go up you can open the door and come back down any time you want. I mean, it's two-way.

I've found that the quest marker tends to remain fixed on the closest doorway to the zone closest to the objective, even if you've moved toward another doorway that may be closer to that zone or to a closer zone. Re-zoning will reset the quest marker to the correct doorway.

I'm posting what resulted in my being "stuck" in the elevator. The problem was that once the elever ascended, I could not activate the lever that opened the gate. The lever was very difficult to see as it was night. Once I did see the lever, I couldn't get the option of flipping the lever but instead kept activating the elevator which took me back down to the ground. I finally figured out that the elevator could be activated from almost anywhere inside the thing. I then tried to "zero-in" on the lever only and eventually got the darn thing to allow activation from an odd angle. The gate then swung open and I was free.

I can understand how my claiming I was stuck in the elevator sounded very odd. It would be nice if the lever was a different material than the same wood to which it is attached. My problem was one of being unable to see that there was a lever to activate in order for the gate to open. Minor glitch.