Game crashing in similar way to PoE 2 since the 3.27c patch yesterday

This path PoE 2 season was rough, with crashers every 30 minutes or so. What would happen is that the screen would freeze, typically either in the middle of combat in a map, or in a town (perhaps from loading mtx effects of other players). It would stick like that for a bit, then I would have to click to either close the window or wait for the game to respond.

If i wait, then after a few seconds, the game will unfreeze, and the screen will turn back and start loading the graphics of the zone again. (side note, in PoE 2, the game auto pauses when this happens, but it does not auto pause in PoE 1). Then after it loads, I can see the screen and play normally again.

Ever since the recent PoE 1 patch this week, I have been getting this issue once every couple of hours.

I am on windows 10. Nvidia 3070 TI graphics card. Happy to answer other questions. It seems to happen either when in combat with lots of effects going off like herald of thunder, or in town, which I assume is due to mtx effects.

Just to give an update, had a similar situation in an Ultimatum on the defiled cathedral map earlier, except it was a full crash to desktop, which made me lose all of my rewards for ultimatum.