Skyrim:Nimhe, the Poisoned One

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Kill the giant frostbite spider blocking access to Nchuand-Zel. Quest Giver: Calcelmo Reward: Access to the Dwemer Museum and Nchuand-Zel Disposition: =1 (Calcelmo) ID: FreeformMarkarthO Suggested Level: 16

Nimhe blocking the entrance to Nchuand-Zel

Quick Walkthrough

1. Talk to Calcelmo in Understone Keep.
2. Kill Nimhe, a giant Frostbite Spider.

Detailed Walkthrough

Speak to Calcelmo, who spends his time at the arcane enchanter set up across the underground river from the entrance to the Nchuand-Zel excavation site. Talk to him about his work, and he will inform you that he has been placed in charge of curating artifacts extracted from Nchuand-Zel, an ancient Dwemer castle located deep within the mountain behind Understone Keep. He mentions his excavation efforts being thwarted by the presence of Nimhe, a giant frostbite spider that is blocking the entrance to Nchuand-Zel. He asks you to kill the spider in exchange for access to both his Dwemer museum and the site itself.

The entrance to the Nchuand-Zel excavation site is a large metal door at the top of a short flight of stairs directly across the stone bridge located in the area where Calcelmo's arcane enchanter is set up. Once inside, you will encounter a set of two square rooms connected to each other, with staircases on all sides of each room. All staircases are blocked by crumbled stone except the one at the far left, which provides access to the excavation site. (If you go straight and jump up all the rocks at the end of the room opposite the entry door, there is a dwemer chest with some modest loot.) After proceeding through a short passage, you will descend into an area which is still under excavation (mostly dirt and wooden scaffolding), and encounter two or three frostbite spiders. After killing these, you will proceed a little deeper into the excavation area, where you will come across a seeming dead end, with webs on part of the wall. Look closely and you will see that some of the webbing is blocking a passage. Destroy the webs with melee attacks or destruction magic to provide access to the passage, which will lead you to a medium-sized room with a raised stone walkway with stairs at the opposite end, covered with spider webs. If you look up, you will see the large webbed hole in the ceiling through which Nimhe will descend once you approach close enough.

Dispatching of Nimhe may prove difficult within the tight quarters in which she spawns, since there is very little opportunity to pull back from her attacks. This makes having a follower here quite useful: just as Nimhe is descending, a good strategy is to quickly duck behind the large column to the left of where she drops down so that she targets your follower. This allows you to flank Nimhe from her right while she focuses on your follower. Another option is to retreat back down the corridor from which you came and attack Nimhe with ranged weapons or spells, as she cannot fit in the passage. Killing Nimhe and informing Calcelmo of her demise will complete the objective. At this point, you have full access to Nchuand-Zel, whose door is at the top of the stone walkway in the room where Nimhe spawned, behind another web-wall that must be destroyed to provide access. You will also encounter the body of Alethius right before the web-wall, containing clues leading to another objective within Nchuand-Zel.

Notes

• Despite access to Nchuand-Zel being promised by Calcelmo as a reward for this quest, the area may be accessed, and thus Nimhe encountered, beforehand by picking the lock on the excavation site door.
• You can access Nchuand-Zel without killing Nimhe, but this may prove rather difficult, as her large body blocks a good deal of the rather small antechamber preceding the entrance.
• An easy way of killing Nimhe is by standing at the entrance of the antechamber and shooting her with a bow and arrows or ranged Destruction magic. Her body is too big to fit in the hallway, therefore she cannot attack you.

Bugs

• Nimhe may re-spawn upon returning to the Nchuand-Zel Excavation Site after a long enough period of time.

Quest Stages

Nimhe, the Poisoned One (FreeformMarkarthO)
Stage	Finishes Quest	Journal Entry
10		(Objective is assigned): Kill Nimhe inside Nchuand-Zel
15		(Objective is assigned): Tell Calcelmo that Nimhe is dead
20

 

Notes

• Any text displayed in angle brackets (e.g., <Alias=LocationHold>) is dynamically set by the Radiant Quest system, and will be filled in with the appropriate word(s) when seen in game.
• Not all Journal Entries may appear in your journal; which entries appear and which entries do not depends on the manner in which the quest is done.
• Stages are not always in order of progress. This is usually the case with quests that have multiple possible outcomes or quests where certain tasks may be done in any order. Some stages may therefore repeat objectives seen in other stages.
• If an entry is marked as "Finishes Quest" it means the quest disappears from the Active Quest list, but you may still receive new entries for that quest.
• On the PC, it is possible to use the console to advance through the quest by entering setstage FreeformMarkarthO stage, where stage is the number of the stage you wish to complete. It is not possible to un-complete (i.e. go back) quest stages, but it is possible to clear all stages of the quest using resetquest FreeformMarkarthO.