Unrelated to anything I'm working on, I found a funny glitch in Dark Souls 2. I found that despawning this elevator in Shulva, while it's still during its animation of returning to the top position will confuse the game. When you warp back to the area, it'll descend on its own when you get back to it. And in addition to that, if you rest at the bonfire after warping back there, when you call the elevator back up it'll be broken. Its switch will no longer work and you can't use it. This is fixable by resting at the bonfire again, which will cause the elevator to move down on its own once more. However, the next time you call it back up it'll work correctly again.
Maybe I'll look into this further, it would be neat to know how, exactly, unloading the elevator and its switches, combined with reloading the area and resting at the bonfire result in conflicts that confuse the current state of the elevator.
These are the steps involved:
Ride Elevator Down
Send the Elevator Back Up
Get the elevator to despawn in under 20 seconds
I do this by dropping down to that specific floor by the Entrance of the Sanctum. Any sooner isn't far enough.
An alternate strategy that saves some time and travel is to simply die while the elevator is being sent back up, that works too.
Warp back to the bonfire
Rest at the bonfire
Go back down to the elevator, it should go down on its own
Call the elevator back up, it should be broken now