Thousand Maws Continually Black Screening / Locking Up PC
Hello, I've been playing FFXIV: A Realm Reborn for over a month without any issues whatsoever. But last night, I finally got to the main story quest involving the Thousand Maws instance.
After going in using Duty Finder, I made it about 3 or 4 sets of enemies in when, suddenly, the entire screen went black and my PC would not respond. I did a hard reset, logged back in, and set up Duty Finder again. About 20 mins. later, I went in with a party already in progress, ran through and found them. The moment we started fighting... bam, black screen again with PC lockup.
Aggravated at this point, I logged in again. Same deal: 20-minute wait, Duty Finder, went in, a few fights in = black screen necessitating a hard reset.
This went on 2 more times last night until I gave up and started searching for Thousand Maws bugs, although I didn't really come across anything in the forums or Google/Bing. Since some of the parties I'd entered in progress said they'd lost players out of nowhere, I assumed it was a server problem, so I figured I'd try again this morning.
Woke up this morning, logged in and put up Duty Finder. Went into a party in Thousand Maws. During the first pull and fight... you guessed it, BLACK SCREEN necessitating a hard reset!
I'm out of options. I obviously cannot progress any farther without completing this instance, so I need some help. Like I said, my PC has ran this game without as much as a hiccup since the first day I started playing. It's just this instance that has, out of nowhere, become a thorn in my side. I realize my system specs are outside the range of recommended, but like I'm stressing here: I'm running this game absolutely fine in Desktop (Standard) at 1440x900 (default of monitor I'm using) with 42-50 fps consistently.
System Specs:
AMD A10-6800k running at standard turbo of 4.4 with the IGP boosted to 1013 (also tried standard IGP in UEFI and slightly boosted to 900-ish, but no difference, still black screens)
8gb 2133 RAM
ASRock FM2A88X Extreme 6+ motherboard
Xigmatek Gaia heatsink
Plenty of ample cooling in my Fractal Arc Midi 2
Really, the highest temp I've gotten using ASRock's UEFI and ATuning is 42 celsius. Definitely not overheating or overworking the PSU. Definitely runs the game fine on lower graphics, I've been pleasantly surprised actually. Not thinking it's a gear problem at all. Catalyst is updated to current standard (no beta drivers), all other drivers are updated to snuff. I got a score of just a hair over 7000 in the latest version of the benchmark.
When I go in, it's as an Archer. I've tried switching gear once inside to no avail. It doesn't seem to happen during any specific command or skill usage, and just during this one instanced dungeon/quest... never even remotely had a problem before.
Server: GOBLIN
Please help, as this is a major dump on any further progression in this game!