Frequent Crashes / BSODs / Restarts Starting in Act 2

[Mizunera]

Hello everyone,

I'm hoping someone might have some insight or perhaps the developers are aware of this issue. I'm running Expedition 33 on a high-end rig (specs below) and had an absolutely flawless experience throughout the beginning of the game, with no crashes or major issues whatsoever.

My System:

-GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4090
-CPU: Intel i9-13900KF
-RAM: 64GB DDR5
-OS: Windows 11

Ever since reaching Act 2, the game has become a nightmare to play. I'm experiencing constant, random crashes approximately every 15 to 30 minutes. These crashes happen seemingly without reason – sometimes during gameplay, sometimes during cutscenes. Even worse, I occasionally get a BSOD, or my entire PC spontaneously restarts.

I've read through various posts here and tried the common suggestions:

-Forcing the game to launch using DirectX 11.
-Lowering all graphics settings to Low.
-Capping the FPS (tried various limits like 60, 30).
-Changing compatibility modes for the game's executable.
-Ensuring GPU drivers and Windows are fully updated (I even did a clean reinstall)
-Verifying game file integrity.

Result: Absolutely none of these steps have resolved the issue. The crashes persist exactly as before.

To rule out my hardware being faulty, I've run extensive tests:

-Multiple 3DMark benchmarks (Time Spy, Port Royal, etc.).
-MemTest86 for several passes to check RAM stability.
-OCCT stress tests (CPU, GPU, Power Supply).

My system passed all these tests without any errors, crashes, or overheating. Expedition 33 is literally the only game or application that causes this level of instability on my machine.

I've seen a few other threads mentioning similar increased crashing. Given that my high-end hardware seems stable outside of this game and ran Act 1 perfectly, this points towards a game-specific issue introduced or exacerbated in Act 2 content??

Does anyone have any other potential fixes I might have missed? More importantly, is this a known issue that the development team is actively working on? Is there any estimated timeframe for a patch? Right now, the game is unfortunately unplayable for me and potentially others experiencing the same problem.

Thanks in advance for any help or information.

[I_Am_A_Bot]

Have you ran a bios update since intel updated their microcode?

[Leihjir]

Those crash absolutely need to be adressed by dev ... lots of report (like alot, just look at the bug related pin thread) on many different set up AMD / Intel CPU with AMD / Nvidia GPU, on up to date and stresstested system appeared right after their first patch.

And the silence from dev start to be concerning ....

[n4]

Try to install 561.09 driver. It fix crashes for me, I think it's NVIDIA drivers problem because a lot of different games works really bad for me last 6 months (PoE2, MH: Wilds, this game).

[Leihjir]

Originally posted by n4:

Try to install 561.09 driver. It fix crashes for me, I think it's NVIDIA drivers problem because a lot of different games works really bad for me last 6 months (PoE2, MH: Wilds, this game).

I did, and it didnt work, i tested multiple drivers (clean DDU uninstall each time), i even update my bios and chipset, i basically tried everything like many people tried without success.
I played like 40+ hours before their last patch and i may have crash 2 or 3 times.
After patch i can crash 6 times in 2 or 3 hours

[Notius]

Did you start Act 2 on Friday/sometime this weekend? Devs updated the game on Friday and that's when most people started complaining of crashes.

I myself bought the game Friday and have been experiencing crashes every 10-30 minutes, one crash before I even hit 2 minutes (literally loaded up save file and first battle crashed). Steam says I have 5.7 hours but my save file is 4 hours and 8 minutes thanks to crashes.

[JuRiOh]

Another thing you can try is to run the game file as administrator. I did that and lowered the graphics from 100% to 75% and it got better o far, but more testing needed. I had 5 crashes in 10 hours, almost exactly every 2 hours. But now last 4 hours were fine after the changes. Might just be luck though.

[MashMash]

People just keep replying its hardware - the psu is dying or itsthe cpu/gpu overheating.

But they ignore that the gpu and cpu are not overheating, and psu's are being replaced and its still happening.

I am not sure what is going on, but exactly as you did, fine till Act 2 is what I've heard.

For the life of me I cannot figure out how this game can make the hardware react this way, but you can't replicate it elsewhere, even when swapping out to new parts, or running tests that stress components.

Mate of mine got a new psu - it immediately crashed on this game.