PoE 1 Loading screen crash

same issue, trying to enter city of sarn.

dx11, dx12, vulkan, engine multithreading on or off, scaling on or off, dynamic resolution on or off, nothing helps and the game keeps crashing on the loading screen.

taking waypoint to city of sarn -> crash
clearing and killing vaal oversoul to use the zone transition -> crash.

Update:
What finally fixed it for me:

1. Uninstall Path of Exile
2. Clean up any and all Path of Exile directories that are still left, make sure they are empty and deleted

"

2a. %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Path of Exile
2b. %AppData%\Path of Exile

3. Reinstall Path of Exile from a fresh download of the client
4. Start, play, no more loading screen crashes.

See https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3072628 as reference