1. Verifying the files in Steam is the first thing I did, and it's what I usually do if any game decides to act weird.
2. Done, still crashing
3. Not running anything except Windows Defender.
From what I can gather, hairworks seems to be the culprit. I haven't tested it out myself but a couple of people on reddit messaged me saying after disabling hairworks the "equip crash" disappeared. Anyways thank you for the replies, I'll open a separate ticket again since CDPR seems to have forgotten about the previous one.
Hm. See what the say. I've not heard of Hairworks causing crashes, but that doesn't mean it can't. Another thing to try in the meantime is a clean installation of the GPU drivers:
1.) Install both
Display Driver Uninstaller and
CCleaner.
2.) Download but do
not install the latest Nvidia reference drivers directly from
nvidia.com.
3.) Restart your computer in Safe Mode with no network connection. Physically disconnect from the internet if you can, just to be safe. (If you don't do this, Windows will attempt to auto-install the latest GPU files and likely layer any issues.)
4.) Run DDU and purge the system of all Nvidia files: graphics, audio, PhysX, etc.
5.) Run CCleaner to remove empty keys from the Registry. Keep running it over and over until it reports "No conflicts." Then, restart the PC -- still in Safe Mode with no network. Run CCleaner repeatedly again. Restart the PC. Keep this up until the program reports "No conflicts" immediately following a restart.
6.) Now, install the Nvidia reference drivers using the CLEAN installation option. (I strongly recommend you do not install Geforce Experience. It can create more problems than solutions.)
7.) Once it's installed, restart the PC in Normal Mode, reconnect to the internet, and you should be running on a 100% solid driver installation.