Crashing upon entering simulacrum. Tried everything I can think of. Never been a problem before.

Title, basically.

I can open the simulacrum fine, enter through the portal, but as soon as I get close to the deli guy, my entire game client crashes. No warning, no error, just straight to desktop.

I've tried lowering every setting, disabling sound from config files, different networking modes, windowed/fullscreen/borderless, nothing makes a difference.

I ran handfuls of simulacrums just the other week without issue. I have changed absolutely nothing on my PC, settings, internet, or hardware.

Asked in POE discord to no avail, and only a few very old threads exist on the matter that were not helpful.

Absolutely no idea what could be causing this.

What else can I be checking? Logs? Reinstall from steam? Has something changed somehow in the past week or is it somehow me?

Such a localised issue is likely to be caused by data corruption.

Try 1. Verify your client's content and 2. Clear your client's cache in the Troubleshooting your Path of Exile client section of the General Troubleshooting Guide sticky thread if you haven't already.