The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Hints

Focus the Oculory.

  • 1 of 8: Talk to Paratus to learn that you'll need to use spells on the armillary device to heat and cool the focusing crystal.
  • 2 of 8: Go up the ramp that starts near him to find a table with two spell tomes on it. Use the Frostbite tome to learn that spell if you don't already know it, then equip Flames in one hand and Frostbite in the other hand.
  • 3 of 8: Drop back down onto the Oculory and go up next to the armillary so you can easily cast Flames and Frostbite on it.
  • 4 of 8: What you need to do is hit the armillery with those spells to get it to move to where each of the beams of light that are coming out of its three lenses will strike the approximate center of one of the three huge rings that go around the dome-shaped ceiling.
  • 5 of 8: Your first goal is to get each of the three lenses' beams of light to strike the center of a different ring. If you're not sure what is and is not a ring, go up the ramp and use the three button pedestals to rotate the rings a few times.
  • 6 of 8: The big problem here is that the beams of light that come out of the lenses may be so faint that you can't see where they're hitting, and therefore can't know when the lenses are set correctly. Also, waiting until a different time of day will have no effect.
  • 7 of 8: I don't know if that's related to the game's graphics settings or not, but I was never able to get the light beams to be any more visible, and was therefore unable to ever work out a good solution to the puzzle. However, I was eventually able (after much random experimentation) to figure out a specific set of moves that got me past it.
  • 8 of 8: If you're playing on a PC, another way to get past this mess is to use the following console code: player.setstage mg06 55