Crashing after killing 2-3 human enemies

[Tw2ntyS7vn]

So I'm at the Hydro electric water station and this gets attacked. Every time after killing 2-3 human enemies, my game crashes.

One thing I noticed throughout my playthrough so far is, it happens when I land 2-3 headshots. But now also when I kill some with my machete, nail bomb, etc. The game freezes for like 2 seconds and crashes to desktop. Weird thing is, it only happens with human enemies and not infected/clickers. Besides that, the game runs really well at 60 FPS cap.

Sad thing is, I can't go further in to the game because this part I have to kill all the human enemies :(

CPU AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-Core Processor, 4301 Mhz
MOBO MSI X470 GAMING PLUS MAX
RAM 16 GB
GPU AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT
Res. 1920x1080 @144Hz

[koston82]

I have the same problem. Been trying to get through Pittsburg for 2 days now. Have to drop graphic setting to low to get through the human combat areas.

[Tw2ntyS7vn]

Originally posted by koston82:

I have the same problem. Been trying to get through Pittsburg for 2 days now. Have to drop graphic setting to low to get through the human combat areas.

Eventually I turned off the reflections and Depth of field completely and somehow I'm not crashing anymore

[BillyZane876]

I had the same problems in 2 places: hydro plant and later in the game (not going to spoil it for you as you didn't progress that far but it's related to a snowy scene).
Game crashed for me several times at the hydro plant, exactly like you mentioned - headshots. I didn't change anything, I simply restarted from the latest checkpoint, tried again. Eventually I went to the next chapter and the crashes didn't occur.

[Tw2ntyS7vn]

I finished the game yesterday. (Still gonna play the "Left behind" part). I had a crash in the snowy part too but that was when I had every setting on Ultra with Motion blur and DOF off. Turned it down to High preset with motion blur and DOF off and didn't have a crash after that. I did however got a lot of "Please Wait..." where I had to wait 5-10 minutes before playing.

I turned on Radeon anti-lag and the game felt smoother. Almost no frame skipping with that.

[DespisE]

I was wondering why I kept having so many crashes during the Hydro Dam section but never experienced a single one up until that point, it was so bad I actually ended up setting the game down and told myself I'd finish it at a later date.

It turns out the update I did right before getting to the Dam actually caused my graphics settings to reset to default which inadvertently turned DoF In-Game + Cinematic back on and set them to Ultra. I had DoF / Aberration / Flares / Motion Blur disabled from the start as I'm not a big fan of the faux cinematic effects that game developers add which explains why I didn't run into any crashing before the update.

I ended up disabling those same effects again after reading this thread and realizing that's what had happened, lo and behold I was able to get through the Dam and onward without any additional problems so thank you for looking into this.

I'll note that I still have all Reflection / Real Time Reflection based settings maxed out, so at least in my case they don't seem to play any role in the crashes during encounters with human enemies.

In-Game Settings: All Settings Maxed (DoF / Aberration / Flares / Motion Blur DISABLED)
CPU: Intel Core i9-13900KS
Mobo: ASUS Z790 TUF Gaming D4 Plus WiFi
RAM: 64GB 4800MHz T-Force Xtreem DDR4
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 (OC)
Monitor: LG C2 OLED - 3840x2160 (4K) @ 120Hz

[koston82]

For me its was playing with the dualsense controller. Couldnt get through human areas. Kept crashing. reinstalled twice, redownloaded graphic drivers. Nothing worked. Started using and xbox controller and finished the game without a single crash.