Funny little exploits in Sunderstone Gorge

So I was trying to advance my dual-wielding Orc character through [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] in order to get the last word of the Fire Breath shout, because I like to BURN ALL THE THINGS!

Unfortunately, so do the Fire Mages that inhabit the place. As a melee character who's put all his chips into close-quarters combat, my Orc (now level 29) is still extremely vulnerable to casters with ranged attacks, and I was repeatedly fried to a crunchy crisp by a Fire Mage at the end of a hallway, standing there spamming fireball after fireball.

After the fourth or fifth time trying to get around that #$%&@, I started looking for another passageway. Just before the long hallway, with the mages (one fire, two ice) standing at the other end, there's a shorter one that goes off to the right. I went down that one and discovered that if I hopped up on a ledge just right, I could make it down to a one-way barred gate.

This turned out to be the exit from the boss room. On the other side of the bars, there was a little alcove containing an alchemy table and various containers with potions and ingredients. At the far end of this little room was another barred gate, and on the other side of that, I could see my objective -- the Fire Breath word wall, guarded by two mages.

I quickly realized that there were two exploits here, both saving me vast amounts of time later:

1. When you get all the way up next to the bars of the gate, you're close enough to activate the alchemy table on the other side. When you do, the "lean over the table and mess with a mortar and pestle" animation starts, literally teleporting you through the bars like the T-1000 in Terminator 2. When you quit the alchemy session, you're still standing in front of the table. You now have free rein to help yourself to the potions (a highly valuable Potent Aversion to Fire poison amongst them, which helps you bring down enemies if you have a fire-enchanted weapon) and ingredients. You're also able to:

2. Walk up to the other gate, whip out a bow, and snipe the fire and ice mages on the other side of the bars with impunity, since they don't retaliate. They just wander around aimlessly while you pump arrows into them. This saves oodles of time once you actually reach the boss room from the correct direction, because then all you have to do is kill a flame atronach.

Encouraged by my little discovery, I pulled the chain to open the first gate and let me out of the alcove, ran back around, and totally coked up with:

- Potions: Fire resist, fortify health, health regen, frost resist, fortify stamina, fortify one-handed, paralysis poison on my fire-enchanted axe, and become ethereal.

- Berserker rage.

- Unrelenting force.

Then I sprinted down the hall like a crazy person, FUS RO DAHed everybody to the ground, and power-attack one-shot each of the bastards into piles of goo.

Now I have the full Fire Breath shout. Next hostile NPC I see gets a face full.