Back when I started in EQ learning a new language was fairly easy. Get a friend to spam messages to you as a tell in the desired language and watch the skill rise. To start with the message came through as a garbled mess but slowly it became readable. I just tried to teach Dark Speech to an alt. I set my group language filter to Dark Speech and started spamming group chat. My group chat window confirms my language is set to Dark Speech and my alt has no skill in it but he can understand everything I say as if it were in Common! How are people teaching/learning languages now a days? What am I doing wrong...or was it just nerfed?
Pop a merc, /lang 1-27 (pick which ya want) Make a hot key with 5 lines of anything at all /g baobka /g bhabkalbh /g ababfab /g balbdkhb /g fdglkaldgjag Spam key
Is your alt a Dark Elf by chance? Hit i for inventory Select the skills button Scroll down to language and see if its all ready max
Theres (I think) a weird thing about the EQ language system where you have to set both main chat AND the window filtered with group chat to the language you want.
Also make sure your alt is in the same zone. 99% certain they have to be in same zones to skill up unless that was changed at some point.
Either he already has the skill or you are using the wrong filter. If the alt has a language of 0, and you speak to them, they will just see jibberish. Your alts should see something like "Elenderil says in Dark Elvish, "kjhaesdjfsdnlkne". If they see "Elenderil says, "This is a test." then you are not speaking in another language If they see "Elenderil says in Dark Elvish, "this is a test". Then they are already maxed in that language. If using a hotkey for this, I believe you need your main chat window set the the language. It needs to be in the language for whatever window you are typing in.
My main is a Wood Elf who speaks Dark Speech at skill 100 (from back when role play was more common) the alt is a Half Elf. I will try the main chat and group chat thing to see if that makes a difference and also the /lang 1- 27 as well. Just need to work out which number each language is but I think Zam has that covered. Thanks for the help guys.
I set every chat window with my desired language. If you only set the main chat window, it might use the language set on another window inexplicably. But, that's not new, I had to do that back in the days after they allowed new chat windows. Sometimes a macro will use the last window you were using to manually enter 'chat' but sometimes it will use the main even if it wasn't the last window used and sometimes it will use a completely different one. The slash command to set language only uses the main chat window, I think.
Verify what window is your chat window for group, set it for the new language, and always do a test, is the learner getting unknown language message, before you spam, also it takes time to move the chat, reduce that time by making the /g lines as short as possible - /g a etc., it is the lines that count not the words.
I assume this is for the trick where you can teach yourself a language, not to teach another character that language?
You are right, that is what I found while testing this. If your other group member is offline then your the one getting skill ups. Easier to just use your merc.
I think we're talkimg about two different things. I was saying the toon training "another" toon has to be in same zone. Obviously a toon can train "themselves" if they are in a group (with offline members or otherwise, in other zones etc) as long as they have at least 1 skill in the language.
Yup, the one 'speaking' the language has to have at least 1 point in the language and, for optimal conditions, be in the same zone. The one 'speaking' can be yourself. However, it is possible to get a skill up on language, even from /tell or /guild, if the speaker is not in the same zone, it's just a lot more unlikely. I was shocked, a couple weeks ago, when I got a skillup from a /tell both because I didn't remember not being at max in that language and.. well.. it was a /tell.
Just to make one thing perfectly clear, OP was talking about sending TELLs as a teaching method. I think others explained that it is GROUP chat that teaches. At least this is the common way of doing it.
Group in the same zone is the optimal generally because you can spam group. And you can use it to self-teach because you 'hear' your own speak in a group. It is possible to learn from receiving a /tell, chatter in /guild, and even someone in /say, but a lot less optimal and a lot slower. I never had a skill up from /emote or heard of anyone else getting a skill up from emote, so I don't think that works, but I could be wrong. I vaguely remember getting a skill up from an NPC one time but that's also so rare as to be mythical. Also, you don't need to learn a point first from the Guildmaster unless you plan to teach yourself via merc. Anyone with at least 1 point in a language can teach you that first point (optimally with the group spam method). But, the more proficient the teacher also makes the language lesson faster.
The issue was that I needed to have bother main chat and group chat set to the required language, as suggested by Soulbanshee. Only setting group chat to the language didn't work. Strangely having main chat set to Dark Speech and group to Common still gave updates to Dark Speech!
