I have been wandering around the Ratway Vaults for an hour, perhaps more. Can anyone please tell me how the hell to get back to the Ragged Flagon? I've even tried cheats, but they didn't work. I could reload an earlier save, except that would mean doing the whole quest over again and losing all the treasure I picked up in the Ratway.

Enable quest indicators in your journal, then pull up the local map. That should flag the exit for you.

Of course I've tried that. There are so many different levels to the place that it tells me I'm near the exit when I'm not. I am completely lost.

You have a map. Use it.

The Ratway Vaults is where there are various hostile vagrants iirc?

The exit to the Ragged Flagon is on the top level. There's a central room in the vaults with a floor level at the bottom, a walkway halfway up the room, and a walkway across the top. If you are at the bottom you have to take the passage out and keep going left I think (although it could be right), then after a while you will come back to that room on the middle walkway, then again after a while of side rooms you will come to the top walkway of the room and you should now be able to see the quest marker on the door to the Ragged Flagon on the same level as you.

I think that's sort of right if we're talking about the same place. I got lost there too as it's multilevel and the local map doesn't help that much as it can look as though you're right by the exit when you're actually 2 storeys below it.

That probably isn't much help because I can't recall whether you have to keep turning left or keep turning right.

Edit to add: If you are on PC the cell for the Ragged Flagon is called RiftenRaggedFlagon so you could try using coc RiftenRaggedFlagon in the command console if you are truly lost beyond redemption!

... leave a trail of gold coins? or sweetrolls if you collect them.

If you have the clairvoyance spell, this would be an ideal time for it.

Just turn on one quest that's outside of the Ratway, it'll only flag the one door, and if you're jsut sick of being down there like I was, then in console type "tcl" without the quotation marks. It'll turn collision off and you just walk straight to the door with the marker on it, then go through it and type tcl again to turn collision back on.

Use "tcl" and fly straight to the exit, through all the walls and floors. :foodndrink:

Thank you all for your help. I'm now free of the bloody Ratway.

In the future, the standard method of solving a maze is to always follow either the right or lefthand wall, so if there's a staircase on that wall, go up or down it, etc...eventually you will find the way out, unless you're following an inner closed wall (To discover this, drop some worthless items like flagons so you'll know when you've gone full circle on that wall, then switch to the other wall and follow that one.