I was dealing with some freezes most noticeable during start-up after patch 2, not sure if this was caused by Patch 2 or because I had to Whitelist the executable again. The issue is apparent in the videos posted down below, the game would freeze up and take a long time to load with the firewall turned on and BG3.exe connections blocked, in most cases it would cause micro-freezes as well after some period of time while playing (not recorded).
The game would start > Larian Studios logo Freeze > 10+ seconds later > Sticks to about 30-50% Freeze + slowly works itself up to 100% > Like 20+ seconds later > Menu loads > Click on Continue > Freeze > 10-30 seconds later game loads in > Some micro-freezes > Wait 2 minutes > Everything seems fine.
Tried the obvious steps like: - Verifying files - Updating drivers - Remove the settings files/cache/Nvidia Shader Cache in Appdata - Reinstalling the game
All to no avail.
Then I remembered that I probably didn't enable internet access on BG3.exe via Portmaster (Open source Firewall GUI) after I installed Patch 2, as I tend to whitelist applications instead of letting everything access the internet freely. I enabled Internet access for BG3.exe and after launching the game again I've only seen a short black screen at the start, but everything else loads in without freezing and is a bunch faster as well.
Not sure if people experience the same if they work based on whitelisting, or blocked it via the regular Windows Firewall... But since the software I use is a GUI for the WFP (Windows Firewall Platform) it shouldn't be any different. I also have no idea if the same happens if you have no internet connection at all.
Videos to showcase the issue:
Firewall on:
Firewall off:
NOTE: The videos might have some added jitter and lesser quality from compression.
