I just bought the game yesterday and I am having issues with joining servers and playing the game overall.

Whenever I try to join a server, regardless if it is official or custom, it would freeze halfway and the only way out is to prompt the not responding window or exit the game thru task manager.

However, deleting the DayZ folder in my Documents folder seems to fix the issue temporarily. I am able to load into a game and play for a few minutes but then freeze/crash. I launch the game again, then it brings me back to the original issue, it only loads halfway then freezes once more. If I delete the DayZ folder again, it repeats the same thing, wherein I'm able to load into a game, play for a few minutes then freeze/crash.

EDIT: After deleting the DayZ folder in my Documents, I can join the servers and play without any issues. As soon as I change any graphics settings and exit the game, the issue comes back. I can change the FOV and keybinds but something with chaning graphics settings is messing with my game.

Things I have tried:

• Clean reinstall of drivers (DDU and Add/Remove Programs) | no changes
• Reinstalled the game entirely | no changes
• Run vanilla game | no changes
• Redownloaded mods for modded servers | no changes
• Run Bulldoze | no changes
• Run sfc /scannow | no changes

Other issues I have encountered:

• Changing settings to extreme preset results to CTD, disabling nvidia overlay seems to fix the issue
• Change FOV results to CTD, unable to consistently reproduce the issue.

Steam has already declined me for a refund since apparently downloading mods through DZSA runs the game as well which made me exceed the 2-hour refund policy. Now I am stuck with a game that doesn't work.