PoE 2 – Clearfell Encampment Crash & Unplayable Characters after Dawn of the Hunt patch

Hey everyone,

I’m having a serious issue with PoE 2 that’s preventing me from progressing. Every time I try to load into or leave Clearfell Encampment, the game crashes. This isn’t just an occasional crash—it’s happening with every character, and now I can’t even load my existing characters!

What’s Happening
Crash at Loading Screen: Whenever I transition to or from Clearfell Encampment, the game crashes. Sometimes it even crashes on the login screen after playing for a short period.

Error Log: Some players have seen errors like “Failed to decompress (corrupted data)” in their logs, suggesting issues with data decompression/shader cache.

Unplayable: After repeated crashes, my characters become “bricked” – I can’t load them at all, effectively locking me out of the game.

What I’ve Tried So Far
Verifying Game Files: I re-verified the game files on both Steam and the standalone launcher.

Reinstalling the Game: I even reinstalled the game multiple times.

Switching Graphics APIs: I’ve tried running the game on Vulkan as well as DirectX 11/12.

Adjusting In-Game Settings:

Toggled VSync on/off

Capped FPS to 60

Lowered graphics settings (even though my PC is high-end)

Disabling Multi-Core Threading: I turned off multi-core threading in the advanced settings, as some users reported this as a fix.

Clearing Shader Cache: I deleted the shader cache from %appdata%/Path of Exile 2 and verified the game files afterward.

Changing Server Regions: A few community members mentioned switching the server from Moscow to Frankfurt helped, though I haven’t had much luck with that.

My Setup
CPU: Intel i9-13900K

GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4090

RAM: 64GB

OS: Windows 11 Pro 23H2

Given these specs, I don’t think it’s a hardware issue, but rather a bug in the current early access build.

Has Anyone Found a Permanent Fix?
I know many of us are experiencing this issue, and while some of these workarounds provide temporary relief, the problem persists. Has anyone found a reliable fix or received an official update from GGG regarding this? If you’ve discovered any additional troubleshooting steps that worked, please share!

I appreciate any insights or suggestions. This bug is making the game almost unplayable, and I’m really hoping for a patch soon.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Exactly the same here! Tried everything I could. No idea what to do.

Same here, except my main character is "bricked" but others work fine. I got stuck in Cruel ogham manor and now its just loading same map and throws me out before i get to game. I have also tested everything i can and up ppl have said.

I hope this is fixed before i wake up..

Same issue here, I couldn't play today.

Same issue for me. I had a new character port into Clearfell (dawn of the hunt). Now I can no longer login to play that character. Every time it tries to load the game crashes to desktop.

I tried an old character I had in my hideout (not new league), moved him to Clearfell, and as soon as I did that the game crashed for this different character and now I can no longer login with that character either.

same here

+1 also having this issue. Cant load into clearfell

same issue...

Guys, could you please check log file %PoE folder%/logs/LatestClient.txt exactly after crash? If you have something "8a08064e [CRIT Client 20864] Oodle failed to decompress after 2 times. Aborting..." that mean this is the common problem.
And it's crashing even in main menu...

Fixed the issue by going to the main Poe2 folder (steamapps\common\Path of Exile 2), searching for "shadercache" and deleting everything that came up. Steam redownloaded a few gigs and the game works fine now.

PS Had "Oodle failed to decompress" in the log.