Legendary lost sector

"Come on, please, it has to be somewhere around here!"
Cogwyn was at her wit's end, and apparantly desperate enough to be begging the rotten wooden floor of the abandoned saloon she was in.
"Pst. Magical weapon?" One hand clutching the faded map, Cogwyn opened the faded parchment to check where she was again. Following the long-lost roads on the maps, her finger once again arrived in the town of Foghorn on the map, the town built on the lake-bed of the legendary Lake.
The Lake that held a legendary weapon called Excalibur.
Cogwyn needed that weapon, right about now. It would honestly be very good timing right about now. Cogwyn had lost and given up too much to be here in the ghost town of Foghorn, knee-deep in the barren territories of the long-fallen Human civilization.
Goddamn it, Cogwyn was sure the spot she was in was at the center of the long-dried lakebed. Digging her claws into the plank, Cogwyn pulled as hard she could, trying to at least dislodge it a bit. The Crownhunters will be here soon, and then she'll be screwed. There was nowhere else to run anymore.
Digging her claws deeper into the rotten wood at that thought, Cogwyn pulled harder. Her muscles strained as she grunted in effort before she lost her grip on the wood and was flung backwards from the force used to tug at the wood.
"Ugh!"
Cogwyn punched the wooden board, then immediately regretted it as she registered the pain from her punch. Nursing her fist, Cogwyn turned towards the doorframe of the building, heart dropping in her chest as she saw the blurry figures in the distance, riding towards the saloon.
Immediately standing up from her crawling position, Cogwyn reached towards the pair of daggers stashed in her pant legs and found... nothing. Right, she lost them by throwing them at the Crownhunters where they promptly flew off into the cliff the Crownhunters were standing by.
Whatever, she still had her claws.
Jumping on the table, Cogwyn screeched on the table as the Crownhunters entered the room.
"Goblin! Do not resist your death, the crimes of your kind will be paid in full!" The Crownhunters drew their swords at their leader's statement, the swish of the sword causing a pleasant metallic sound as they were unsheathed.
"Crimes of what, fucking existing?"
"Yes."
Stupid xenophobic Empire bullshit. Cogwyn bared her teeth and prepared to rake her claws all over the Crownhunters face. But before either side could make a move, a loud crack resonated in the room.
A pale, ghostly hand punched out of the floorboard Cogwyn was trying to ply open, their hand holding a bizarre L-shaped contraption.
Cogwyn stared at the pale hand. "What"
What are you waiting for? Take the gun and shoot! The voice echoed in Cogwyn's head, and sorry, a voice is speaking in her voice telling her to take—a gun? What the hell even is a gun?
I am the Lady of the Lake, the Keeper of Excalibur. The Mistress of Justice. Take the revolver and enact your justice, little Goblin.
Wait so, you're telling me Excalibur is that weirdly shaped piece of wood and metal you're holding?
Yes. The voice sounded impatient. The hand in the floor, on the other hand, rose further, revealing an arm now. For centuries I have waited for another worthy of Excalibur. Humanity has fallen, but its spirit remains in it.
Rudely, the Crownhunters attacked at that precise moment, apparently having gotten over the ghostly body slowly rising out of the ground. Flashing her attention back to the Crownhunters, Cogwyn barely managed to tip the table over and scramble out of the way before the sword cut her head clean off her shoulders.
"Asshole! I was having an in-my-head conversation there!" Cogwyn spit at the Crownhunters attacking her as she dodged out of the way of another strike, the sword burying itself into a dusty table.
By now, the Lady of the Lake's form had appeared fully. She was transparent, but her form revealed her to be a bipedal women with long hair, wearing a simple dress. Her eyes facing forwards, like a predator's. Cracking her knuckles, she rolled her arm before sending a devastating punch, knocking out one of the Crownhunters cold.
The Lady's voice crackled to life in her mind. Eat shit.
Wow, was that really what the Humans looked like? Turns out everyone needs to do some serious updating to their drawings of Humans. They had just assumed they were more prey-like, considering how peaceful their civilization was truly rumoured to be.
Cogwyn eyed the laughing Lady of the Lake with a curious side-eye. So the Humans did have a dark side. Grinning, Cogwyn caught the... gun-thing as it was thrown at her by the Lady. Holding the wooden handle, Cogwyn rushed up to one Crownhunter and bashed it on their head.
Expecting some serious magical stuff to occur, Cogwyn was disappointed when they merely fainted from the blunt force trauma. "Hey, I thought this weapon was magical!"
It is. You're just using it wrong. Grip the handle and pull the trigger—that spring near the handle—while aiming it.
Taking the Lady's advice, Cogwyn aimed as one Crownhunter rushed her and pulled the trigger. A bloom of smoke rose from the tip of the weapon as a loud boom filled the room. The gun, like a particularly violent horse, kicked back, almost forcing Cogwyn to drop the magical artefact on the ground.
The person in front of Cogwyn stopped and dropped, a hole in the middle of their chest.
"Holy shit."
Indeed.
Standing in the ruins of the room, the Lady and Cogwyn stood in the center of a whirlwind of bodies and broken furniture. Cogwyn laughed out loud in joy as she stared at the weapon in her hand.
"You know, most artifacts only allow their own species to wield them." Most ancient artifacts were too prissy to allow anyone but them to wield their precious weapons, which meant that the Elder races held all the cards when it came to power, leaving newer races to lick boots in order to get scrap.
It doesn't help that artifacts take time to materialize for any civilization.
Excalibur is not most artifacts. The voice of the Lady was calm, but an edge still held in her voice. Humanity was not most races. Back then, anyone could be a Human.
"Anyone?"
Anyone. Being Human was less being a member of a race at that point, but an idea. The weapon you hold is but a fragment of that idea, crystalized into the form we see now: justice.
"If Excalibur represents justice... What are you, then?"
The Lady paused, a devious smile on her face. Another ancient Human philosophy. One passed on from the earliest days, before even the seedling of Excalibur was even planted.
It was called... Fuck Around And Find Out. The Lady giggled before sighing. Justice doesn't serve itself, y'know.
The Lady of the Lake stretched, bones cracking as she readied up for a long journey ahead of her. Come on now, we have a government to overthrow.
Cogwyn huffed as she followed the Lady out into the desert.

Everything else I have in the title and bottom I am also looking for. All games are CIB, unless stated otherwise. I will take a look at lists, but anything that isn't listed is not my main priority. I am willing to trade up to $200 for the Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition Works Set. Thanks again!
Nintendo 3DS -

• Bravely Default
  
• Bravely Second End Layer
  
• Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl (Soundtrack Bundle)
  
• Fire Emblem Awakening
  
• Fire Emblem Birthright
  
• Fire Emblem Conquest
  
• Kid Icarus Uprising
  
• Katrielle and The Millionaires' Conspiracy
  
• Project X Zone
  
• Tales of the Abyss
  

Nintendo DS -

• Golden Sun Dark Dawn
  
• Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
  
• 999
  
• Okami Den
  
• Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney
  
• Phoenix Wright Justice for All
  
• Phoenix Wright Trials and Tribulations
  
• Phoenix Wright Apollo Justice
  
• Sonic Rush
  
• Valkyrie Profile Covenant of the Plume
  

GameCube/Wii U -

• Extreme G
  
• Pacman World 2
  
• Pokemon Colosseum (Players Choice, Manual Damage)
  
• Zelda Windwaker (Missing Manual)
  
• Zelda Twilight Princess HD Wii U
  

PS4 -

• Ai the Somnium Files
  
• Atelier Firis
  
• Crystar (Loose)
  
• Senran Kagura Peach Ball Splash
  

Xbox 360/Xbox -

• Bullet Witch (w/poster)
  
• Dead or Alive Xtreme 2
  
• Killer is Dead Limited Edition
  
• King of Fighters XIII
  
• Onechanbara Bikini Samurai Squad
  
• Otomedius Excellent Special Edition
  

Switch -

• 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim
  
• 2064 Read Only Memories
  
• Advance Wars 1-2 Reboot Camp (New)
  
• Ai the Somnium Files Nirvana Initiative CE (New)
  
• Aokana Four Rhythm Across the Blue
  
• Atelier Ryza 2
  
• Catherine Full Body
  
• Danganronpa Decadence
  
• Doki Doki Literature Club (New)
  
• Fatal Twelve
  
• Fault Milestone (New)
  
• Fire Emblem Engage Divine Edition
  
• Fire Emblem Three Houses
  
• Langrisser I & II
  
• Liar Princess and the Blind Prince Storybook Edition
  
• Live a Live (New)
  
• Monark
  
• Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists
  
• Nier Automata End of the YorHa Edition
  
• Octopath Traveler
  
• Persona 5 Royal
  
• River City Girls
  
• River City Girls 2 (New)
  
• Rune Factory 4
  
• Tactics Ogre Reborn
  
• The Legend of Heroes Trails to Azure (New)
  
• Triangle Strategy
  
• Voez
  
• Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition
  
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2
  
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Torna the Golden Country
  
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Pro Controller (w/box)
  
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3
  
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3 GameStop Promo Cloth/Poster (34 x 24)
  
• YS VIII Lacrimosa of Dana Adventures Edition
  

Gameboy Advance/Color (CIB unless stated otherwise) -

• Golden Sun
  
• Golden Sun The Lost Age
  
• Gunstar Heroes (Loose)
  
• Pokemon Emerald (Loose)
  
• Sonic Advanced 2 (loose)
  
• Sonic Battle (loose)
  

Miscellaneous Stuff -
(Anime Merch)

• K-ON! Kakifly English Manga (1-4 + HS & College + Omnibus)
  
• Megumin Nendroid (#725 NIB)
  
• Serial Experiments Lain (Blu Ray + DVD Combo)
  
• Violet Evergarden Complete Series
  

PSP/Vita -

• Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep
  
• Phantasy Star Portable 2
  
• Mary Skelter Nightmares
  

WANTS -

• Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition Collector's Set Switch ($200 value towards this CIB)
  
• MegaMan Starforce Pegasus (Loose/Up to $65 in value)
  
• Nagisa Furukawa Nendroid (You would be my best friend for life if I could ever swap for this lol)
  
• Other DS/3DS Games I don't have
  
• Your Lists
  

I used to play this game on PS4 and still have my PS4 console. Not to brag but there are players that can hardly beat me, even against players with epic/legendary cards. The problem here is that I just got my PS5 console (brand new) and have only played efootball on it. Already, I feel like smashing the console to pieces because of my players' actions just about two weeks of purchase.
They run around like headless chickens and rarely match up even when I press the L2 button like my life depends on it. Another issue I have noticed is in instances of through balls; my defenders are often slightly ahead of the opponents' strikers and all of a sudden, my players either slow down or stop running.
Everyone I play against beats me now. I lost 15 straight games in the just concluded phase while in Division 1. I can't tell if this is an eFootball thing on PS5 or if my controller has a mind of its own. I found a way to turn off the trigger intensity effect but it doesn't seem to do anything here.
PS5 owners who play eFootball, does anyone experience this? How do I get around this?

Hello fellow Apes,
I am supposed to be playing D4 with my kids but instead I am writing this post for you. It's ok. I'm having fun because I'm actually into talking about this shit. Anyway, I was inspired to write an explanation regarding other companies used of AI based on u/Sandro316 's reply from this post I made earlier https://www.reddit.com/CLOV/comments/144na72/the_reasons_why_big_names_are_linked_with_this/. I'm posting it here to we can highlight this topic, and the information doesn't get lost in the comments section.
The purpose of this post is to explain in laymen terms what these companies are doing in AI from the perspective of a healthcare administrator. A little bit about my background. I started out in healthcare research and did my fellowship at NIH. I have 13+ years of experience working at director and c level positions in healthcare and social services. I'm also a big computer geek, and I current have my staff working on an AI system so I can train staff faster and equip them with the skills to help clients/consumers/patients navigate the complex healthcare and social service systems that we have in California. With that said, let get started.
As a side note, I will make another post regarding the patents CLOV has which pertain to how its AI's is and will be functioning in the future.
Humana for example is mainly focused on improving the customer experience and streamlining administrative tasks
https://www.forbes.com/sites/neiledwards/2020/03/02/why-doesnt-your-healthcare-insurer-use-ai-like-humana-does/?sh=f6faed5608ea
This article is using a lot of big words to explain to you that they trying to build a system that mimic Kaiser and a automated call bot that will hopefully answer all of your questions. Here is a same quote
" Call Center Experience
Humana members call for many reasons: understanding a claim status, inquiring about benefits eligibility, placing orders for new or re-filled prescriptions or appealing a medical coverage decision.
The answers to these questions are stored in different information systems. The company uses artificial intelligence and intelligent automation to help bridge gaps between systems. The aim is a better call experience. "
This is just a small reduction of the current problem regarding claim processing. They are not giving providers a better tool to process claims faster and more accurately. They are just improving their call bot.
The rest of the stuff that was wrote in the article are just Humana trying to copy Kaiser's current system. IF you have Kaiser and appreciate how fast and seamless they make some process such as drug refill, you should get a rough idea of what Humana's AI is trying to achieve.
"United is a little closer to Clover with their optum subsidiary but it is mainly focused on improving patient outcomes by getting them care faster and with the right physician for their case."
https://emerj.com/ai-sector-overviews/artificial-intelligence-at-united-health/

• An AI-enhanced virtual assistant platform to collect patient data and offer customized solutions: UnitedHealth Group’s virtual assistance platform uses conversational AI and enhanced agents that reroute calls to sufficient internal resources, collect and classify patient information, and offer services that bring down costs and improve patient service experiences.

This is exactly what you think it is. They are creating an AI to hopefully understand patients and providers communication better so that they can route them to the appropriate people to process the claim. The reason why United is doing this way go back to the comments I made in my previous posts. They are a very old healthcare company that has a lot of money. However, because their system is so old and deeply rooted in their money making process, it is hard for them to build something like CA which can process treatment, make recommendation, and process the claim--"giving providers more time to treat patients instead of doing paperwork." Want to know what happen when a provider fuck up on their claim? They delay your treatment until the claim is approved by the insurance. This is what United System is trying to reduce with AI.
​

• Developing a centralized data platform to improve patient outcomes: UnitedHealth Group’s resident tech-focused subsidiary, Optum, develops a platform that uses data analytics, NLP, machine and deep learning models to improve patient outcomes by predicting conditions and decreasing the cost of care.

This second part of their AI is exactly what CA is currently doing. While Optum and United are in development of a system that they still have to figure out how to integrate into their legacy system without causing catastrophic errors--CA is being used and has proven to improve healthcare outcomes and reduce cost (MCR). As a side note, if you think integrating, migrating, or switching to a new system is easy, just take a look at the shit show that is redetermination for Medi-caid that is currently going on. So many people are being dropped from Medi-caid and they don't even know it.
As for the rest of the article and the fancy words they used, it's fucking Kaiser. I'm sorry that I get annoyed, but whenever I read an article that used fancy words to trick laymen people, I get mad. I advocate for the people with 9th grade literacy, and this kind of shit are just describing Kaiser's system which is the current king of primary care if you haven't heard about it. Their system is used at the role model at so many meetings, it's not even funny. They have amazing coordinated care because they are the insurance and provider.
Anyway, next article..
"Oscar is again trying to improve outcomes by routing members to the correct place. Then also improve efficiency."
https://www.hioscar.com/deepdive/oscar-strategy
The AI being deploy here is to reduce the amount of fraudulent claims basically medical misuses. I'm actually very knowledgeable about Oscar, and they not investing in AI as much as they should. They are just improving their current system to detect bad claims and speed up the processing time.
In summary, CLOV's current competitors are trying to build AI on top of their current medical billing systems/platforms. Consequently, due to the limitation of those systems/platforms, they are not able to innovate as much as CA. By the end of the day, their system is still heavily reliant on a human being on insurance side to process the claim and another human being on the provider side to file the claim correctly.
This is very different than providing providers with the tools to
1) process claims
2) make recommendation on what claims (treatment) should be used based on the data from previous patients.
The big problem with health insurance companies now a day is they are so out of touch with the amount of time a provider need to invest into their staff to understand each company's process to file claims, reconciliation, out of network referral, and etc so they keep finding ways to make it easier for their staff while introducing a bunch of new rules and procedures that are not helping providers. Providers cannot provide services without authorization. Authorization should not require a fucking manual for every god damn insurance company. Ever wonder why you have to check whether your provider accept your insurance? What you are really checking is whether or not they are vendorized or are on the panel to bill the insurance company. Low payout and complicated procedures for processing claim and vendorization are barriers to care.
The only company that even come close to CLOV is United and they are still in development. CLOV's AI is live with multiple patents. https://www.reddit.com/CLOV/comments/144pi0m/clover_health_54_patents_from_2018_to_2023/
The best analogy I can give here to compare Tesla (pre-big-ass company) to GM during the EV1 era. GM made the first electric car and was much bigger than Tesla. Tesla was testing out it's battery powered roadster. However, Tesla had years to test out building their car, battery, and production line.
While CLOV is working on testing and proving the profitability of its AI, other companies are just in the process of developing them. Some of them aren't working on it at all.
Before I forgot, all of the healthcare company mentioned above are basically trying to reduce their turnaround time for when a claim is submitted for both new and prior authorization.

So when I play Deepwoken there’s always that one Flareblood who tries to jump me and guess what? they lost… to a starter sword??? I don’t know what to tell them like dude you have a literal legendary weapon while i have stupid flat bar of iron with a handle and yet you still lose? what the hell man??? ISTG Flareblood user are one of the most boosted thing in the game. I didn’t meant to call out every single Flareblood main but damn I expect you to be better at pvp.
And I don’t know why it’s only the Flarebloods

I was playing earlier today, attempting to catch the last 7 fish necessary for perfection. (Blob, glacier, lava eel, legend, octopus and scorpion carp). After catching the scorpion carp, the game crashed on me and lost all progress for that day. Thankfully, only lost the one fish. But i was pissed and stopped playing for a few hours. Then I started again, and caught lava and scorpion carp easily enough. Then I went to GI to search for an octopus, thinking it was going to take awhile. After about 8 casts, I hooked an octopus - I can tell by how the fucker acted. I lost it a split second after the treasure chest appeared. Four more casts later, and I catch, what I *think* is a flounder or even a squid. Caught the thing in less than 8 seconds and the little fish left the bar all of *once* Turns out it was a gold star octopus. That octopus was one of the easiest things I've ever caught in this game, barring Carp or smallmouth bass that just sit on the bottom and don't move. I've never had such an easy catch with an octopus.
The octopus, which historically has been the fish I catch the least (that includes the legendary fish. I've always found Legend easier to catch than the octopus) so getting it so easily is a bit of a mind fuck.
Now that I think about it, I think I need to end the day soon and save that progress because I will never be that lucky ever again.
​
*edit* I caught the glacier fish the next in game day - and it crashed again. Is anyone else experiencing their game crashing randomly while fishing? I have a pretty advanced gaming pc so this type of thing shouldn't be happening so frequently? This is the 3rd time in 24 hours.

I'm level 62, and I'm still using the Chain Lightning build, mostly because it's too much of a hassle to try other things. I just think there is something not quite right with Chain Lightning, and it's not just how the skill is balanced but how it performs up to expectations.
When I think of Chain Lightning, I envision a spell that creates a bolt of lightning, hitting a bunch of weak enemies and destroying them. That's what it did in Diablo 2. Chain Lightning was the skill you used to clear out packs of weak enemies, and whenever you needed to kill an elite, champion, or boss, you used something like "Lightning," which was a single-target spell that dealt bigger damage but was a lot less efficient against packs of enemies.
The design of Chain Lightning in Diablo 4 does not fulfill this fantasy at all. Firstly, you can only cast maybe three Chain Lightnings before running out of mana. Due to the speed of the bounces, the amount of damage it does per bounce, etc., you're lucky to notice any difference in a group of enemies' health bars whenever you cast it. This feels really bad because you expect a spell that actually costs mana to have a noticeable impact, but it doesn't.
On the other hand, a spell like Arc Lash seems to hit for about the same amount of damage per hit, but it feels a lot better to use. Why is that? Firstly, it attacks faster. It's easier to attack and then, if you decide to stop attacking, it's easier to move out of the way compared to Chain Lightning. The other thing is that it has a big radius, so you can actually hit five or six enemies at the same time if they are bunched up. You don't have to wait for the bounces or anything, and this is a major reason why Chain Lightning seems to perform so poorly. It's being overshadowed by a free basic attack skill that attacks faster, costs no mana, and does more damage in AoE situations.
Realizing this, I basically use Arc Lash almost all the time. I may start a battle using Chain Lightning before I get closer to the enemies, but for the most part, it's never actually efficient to use Chain Lightning in groups despite the fact that it should bounce off multiple enemies. In fact, even when I get the unlimited mana Shrine, it's still more efficient to use Arc Lash than Chain Lightning. How does that even make sense???
So when is Chain Lightning actually good? Against single targets, which, for a Diablo 2 player, is not intuitive at all. Unlike the slow, random bounces off enemies, the bounces between you and a single target - assuming you can engineer this situation - are extremely fast. Add the skill that increases damage by 10% with every bounce between you and an enemy, as well as the Legendary Aspect that regenerates 4-6 mana per bounce off of you, and now we're looking at a pretty effective boss clearer that rivals the Ultimate skill.
Before you jump up and down for joy, though, this game loves to spawn bone walls or new monsters near bosses all the time, so it's actually not so common to use Chain Lightning this way. Even if one monster is spawned - regardless of how far away it is from you and the boss - the bonus damage and mana regeneration are completely lost. This, again, makes the skill feel bad.
Even if this was the intended design, I'm not sure why these values were assigned to a skill called "Chain Lightning." If you asked me what skill I would have wanted for a single-target boss killer that was lightning-based, I would have told you "Lightning" from Diablo 2, not Chain Lightning. But beyond that, I really don't enjoy my "boss killer" skill to be reliant on things I cannot control, like the Boss not spawning new monsters, walls, etc. that mess with its mechanics.
But even with its intended use as a single-target killer, the drawback of the bounces makes the skill feel awful to use most of the time. It's bad against AoE packs. It's even not worth using if 2-3 enemies are on the screen, as it simply costs too much mana and you are probably better off using Arc Lash anyway.
The worst thing about this whole situation is that I'm basically playing Diablo 4 using a Basic Attack almost the entire time, which feels like a slog and is a totally boring way to play a Sorc. If I wanted to play a melee character, I don't think Sorc would have been anywhere near my top 3 choices in an ARPG. Waiting every 60 seconds for my Ultimate to come online to feel any sense of power is not exactly the gameplay fantasy I was looking for to all this time.
Does Chain Lightning need a rework? Is it fine? How would you make it better?

Hi all.
Pretty new and haven't progressed deep into the game so I've just been grinding legion characters. I plan on making an actual main during savior's hyperburn, but I'm curious about how equipment progression looks. I see guides that suggest you use 3 piece CRA for a while and eventually attempt to star those to 20+ etc. But since those items are likely to blow up before you get there, are you supposed to cube the equips? For example, I get my first CRA items and begin to cube those to legendary. If I star those items and they blow up, wouldn't I have just lost all the money I spent cubing?
I'm not sure if I'm asking this question correctly so if you guys need me to clarify, let me know. Thanks!
Edit: Question answered. Thank you.

I'm totally lost on what to list legendaries for at my Vendor and the only posts I could find were years old so I wasn't sure if they were reliable. (I played for about a month after release and didn't pick the game back up till last week so I'm a bit lost on a lot of things but thats neither here nor there)
Whats a good rule of thumb? I don't want to list something way cheap or way high. The ones I'm most hung up on are;
Anti-Armor Gatling Laser w/ +25% VATS Hit & 90% Reduced Weight
Bloodied Grognak's Axe w/ +50% Limb Damage & +1 Str
Aristocrat's Hunting Rifle w/ +25% Aim Damage & +1 Agility
Bloodied LMG w/ +15 AP/kill
They seem really good but outside of legendary effects im lost in what is meta and what is popular.
TLDR; aspiring small business owner seeking financial advice. (List price for legendaries at C.A.M.P. Vendor)
EDIT: Gatling Laser Legendary Effect was wrong. And the formatting looked weird in the app.

I mentioned offering to do a post about working in an ops centre, and I shall indeed, therefore, do such a post.
I don't intend here to go over all the operations of the UK's resilience and emergency infrastructure. You can look all that up. This post is more about what it's like as a civil servant to actually work on these issues.
In brief, however, in 2007 several incidents (Bovine TB notably and lots of piles of burning cows) made Gov realise the Cold War emergency management infrastructure was a bit rubbish. This brought in the Civil Contingencies Act, which dictates modern emergency management and planning stuff. There's a load of things around this, for example reporting through METHANE, following the JESIP principles, adhering to the UK's Concept of Operations, running emergencies through Local Resilience Forums, and so on. Again, not getting into that here.
Nowadays, the UK plans for and anticipates various emergencies, conducting exercises to test procedures, and then responding to the emergency through Operations/ Emergency Management Centres. There's about 20 different types of emergencies that we plan for, and some we don't really bother with.
After all, it's not like pandemic influenza ever hurt anyone, is it? No need to plan for such a thing.
Different departments have different responsibilities. For example, DESNZ has space weather, DLUHC has earthquakes, Home Office have terrorism. Some departments don't have anything because they don't do emergency stuff, but any department that does (there's a list) will have an operations centre and a resilience team. If it's a really big thing Cabinet Office takes over to coordinate in the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (COBR).
Some of the function of these teams is to speak with partner agencies, local groups, and other government departments to establish plans for emergencies. Under certain principles, emergencies are to be dealt with at the lowest level. For example, a local agency such as the police would be able to handle something like a small riot or outbreak of crime. However, if this disruption escalated, it may prevent the local police doing other jobs, like controlling a traffic incident on a motorway. At this point the police may declare a Major Incident, requesting assistance through the Local Resilience Forum, and maybe some firefighters would turn up to help or something. If this disruption got worse, the relevant agency would call for help from the relevant department (eg Home Office in this example). If this got even worse, Cabinet Office would step in to coordinate multiple departments and their operations. As such, you can see how there's several levels of response to incidents, and how there's a few different areas where civil servants would work in operations centres.
Occasionally exercises are undertaken to test these arrangements and train staff. Sometimes these identify important areas of improvement, other times such areas are ignored.
In 'peacetime', if you worked in an emergency team, you might travel about to different places, like regional police headquarters or hospitals, to talk to them about Government guidance, and see if partners had questions. For example you might go up and go through an LRF's cyber incident planning, make sure they were content with what they had to do, ask a few probing questions and so on. You might then put this info into a tracker to assess where you could join up different groups and get them working together to better share resources. Alternatively, you might write a case study on an emergency incident and publicise it to provide learnings for various organisations.
Sometimes you might be on a rota to receive emergency calls. This means you'd have a special number people phone when something's exploded. I got 1 call on such a number once, where a local council phoned me to tell me that everything was fine there and they weren't planning to do anything. This is an emergency number, you're not meant to phone it for that reason.
You will also train to fill various roles in an Emergency Operations/Management Centre (the name differs). This means that when something important happens and the department has to assemble the Centre, you'll be able to slot into whatever role you've been assigned.
In 'wartime' however, everything changes. Things are suddenly exploding and people are dying or falling off tall things. The situation is suboptimal all around, there are stranded Mongolian circus artists all over the place, and everything's a bit of a mess. Someone's been given out-of-date hedgehog food instead of ambient cupboard stuff and now they're sad.
These are all things I dealt with btw.
In the EMC you'll be assigned one of various roles:
Government Liaison Officer: You go along to meetings at local level and represent the government. You'd better know what you're doing and have the latest lines, otherwise they'll complain that you're 'patchy, junior and ineffectual' and sent a formal complaint into your Director. You'll also have to take notes very carefully as it will be important in future inquiries regarding the emergency incident, and it's important to know what central government knew at what time regarding various matters.
Liaison Officer: Get your stuff you're going down the road to camp out in another department. You're the liaison officer between your home department and your new campsite. You're responsible for triaging requests, finding answers in complex policy, and getting an idea of how things work over there.
Policy Officer: You have a pretty nebulous job. You basically are getting information from people about certain issues. During emergencies lots of questions come in from lots of people, whether local government or OGDs, and your job is to answer them and form a relationship with the relevant policy team. You're an expert in emergency management, not space weather for example.
Briefing Officer: You do briefings. To be honest pretty much the same as any other briefing role, except sometimes a lot faster. I did a COBR briefing in 20 mins once.
Situation Officer: You have to manage the situation intelligence of the EMC, you prepare reports and summarise data from local level, you manage meetings to bring together intel from the local level and pass it onto briefing officers or the policy cell.
Logistics Officer: You manage the Battle Rhythm, the cadence of meetings, briefing due dates, and set up relevant teams meetings to keep the EMC running. One department I worked in also had their Logs Cell sort lunch for everyone, so that's nice.
Information Officer: You manage and allocate tickets, emails, inboxes, and the general flow of information around the EMC. You might get 1000 emails an hour, your IT might fall over and collapse. You also hold the specialist information, like maps of terminals for oil which you might need to provide someone who was working on that sort of issue. Sometimes Logs and Info cell are combined.
Ops Management: You manage either cells, for example as a Situation Cell Manger, or you manage the whole Operations centre. Some departments will group cells in particular ways, but basically, you have different levels, from Bronze, like a G7 Briefings Manager, to Silver, a G6 Logistics Manager who manages the Logs and Info cells, to a Gold, who might be a DD Response Director.
Grades in this are extremely flexible, I acted about 2 grades up from where I was once, and in emergency management, you do have to have that flexibility. I've worked in a couple of departments doing this stuff, so it really depends on the structures they put in place too.
Speaking of flexibility, you might be so busy you might be put on a 4 day week. Comparably, you might have to work late at night, get up at 3am to take a call, or work during the weekends. Any overtime is worked out through payments or flexi, and (hopefully) wellbeing is considered during these periods.
You will have to be resilient and calm. You will have to be flexible and adaptable. You will ideally anticipate issues and communicate effectively, and you'll need to be capable of both close team working and independent action.
You will find emergency management to be extremely developing, but potentially extremely stressful. I worked on half a dozen emergencies, including Covid, the Afghan Withdrawal, a couple of big cyber attacks and some floods, and I did indeed get quite burnt out a couple of times. It is a personal choice about whether to go work in resilience. It's a very rewarding career I think, you bring order to chaos, you solve problems and go some way in coordinating terrible events. However, I personally am not sure I'd go back to it. Especially not in the department/team I was in, which had a Bullying/Harassment rate of 25% for 3 years because they consistently failed to manage wellbeing. I've heard some teams call a rate of 15% 'high', to which I say 'lol, get good, scrub'. I suppose to contrast that though there are some amusing incidents which are just very very silly, like 'woops we didn't secure out laptops so we've lost all the vulnerable children on the child sexual exploitation database'.
In terms of career path, you potentially have a lot of stuff though. You can become an expert in a particular field, for example you can be the Space Weather Guy. You could also just go further and further up in response management, which would provide you with a very valuable skill in certain parts of the private sector.
I do however certainly support people getting training and getting involved in exercises as part of the broader cadre of trained personnel. Most departments will have some sort of system for this, so have a look and you can see.
Questions welcome. Will either add to this or answer in the comments.

Right now i just started my Endgame Progression with World4/Torment as i hit lvl 62.
I Love the game, especially the Campaign and feel like it is a GOOD game.
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But i cant help but wonder why so many obvious QoL things are missing.
To List some:

1. Gembag (The most obvious one that my Friendgroup started 2 complain about quiet early on)
2. Saving Builds (i couldnt care less about the cost, but how can u miss somthing like this in a Game, that clearly gives each Class 2-3 obvius build Pathes. Yet we cant save any of them. With all the Legendarys and Uniques u can get, i wanna try out different Builds.)
3. Paragon Bords (Cant save them, cant instantly refund the Points.... like ... why?)
4. S28 Diablo 3 (We finally got the Pets 2 get the Items 4 us end disenchant them 2. Yet we lost that in Diablo 4. There are games where u can even specify, what item u collect and what gets disenchated)
5. LFG (There are a loot of ppl out there who would like 2 run Dungeons with some Randoms, rather than doing them alone. Kinda like Bounties in D3. Where is the Looking for Group Option?)
6. Alts/Twinks (I heard somewhere, that D4 is Alt friendly. And that is true in some Parts of the game. But when i start with a new Alt and skip the Campaign, why do i have 2 explore every Corner and Waypoint of the world again? D§ made it ez -> Adventure Mode <- And we had every Waypoint)

I dunno, it just feels like so many missed opportunities. Like i Said, i love the game and will play it till i hit Lvl 100. But while i do play i always wonder if they left things out, just 2 earn Brownie Points later down the Road with Season 57 .... right when Diablo 5 releases.
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--- My first Language isnt English, so pls dont say anything about the Spelling/Grammar ---