Silent crash on area transitions unless manually saving first

Just report a reproducible crash in Pillars of Eternity 1 (Steam, current build, Windows 11, all DLC installed, ~18 hours into a playthrough).

THE ISSUE:

When transitioning to a new area, the game black-screens and the process silently exits (originally with a “map loading error” message, now no message at all). After it happens once, the options menu on the main screen also hangs on a blank page until the game is restarted.

RELIABLE WORKAROUND / REPRODUCTION:

If I manually save right before an area transition, the transition always works. If I don’t save first, it crashes. This is 100% reproducible in my playthrough. Sending a companion on a Stronghold adventure also crashes the game instantly, every time, regardless of which companion is sent.

WHAT THE LOG SHOWS:

Player.log always ends shortly after this sequence:

StatusEffect:ClearEffect(GameObject, Boolean)

CharacterStats:ClearAllStatusEffects()

CharacterStats:OnDestroy()

ERROR: Exception in StatusEffect.ClearEffect(), please fix! Attempting to gracefully continue.

After that it unloads assets, begins setting up Enlighten worker threads for the next scene, and the log cuts off.

NOTABLY: no Crashes folder is ever created (UnityCrashHandler64 never triggers), and Windows Event Viewer contains zero Application Error entries for PillarsOfEternity.exe. The process appears to quietly exit rather than hard-crash.

ALREADY RULED OUT:

• Mods: removed the only mod (a localization pack), then did a complete fresh reinstall. Crashes persist on a 100% vanilla install.

• File integrity verified via Steam.

• No visible status effects on any party member; unequipping gear and testing party members individually did not reveal a culprit (though reloading a save appears to temporarily reset whatever state causes the crash, which may have masked results).

• Resting does not help.

Attached: Player.log, Player-prev.log, dxdiag output, and a save file from which the crash can be reproduced (load the save, travel to any new area WITHOUT saving first).

PoEbug.rar