CTD always after Archdemon cutscene - Ultimate Edition

Hi. I got DA: O Ultimate Edition in the Steam sale and have really enjoyed the game so far. I'm 35 hours in, have completed the mages, dwarves, and redcliffe quests up to retrieving the ashes. My first CTD in this time was during the High Dragon Fight on the Mountain Top. I had 4-5 recreatable crashes in the fight so I tried skipping him for now and moving on for the ashes. I was able to do so, but when I try to fast travel to Redcliffe I see a cutscene of the Archdemon shouting. Then, when it starts to load the map again CTD. I am able to travel to the the dalish without CTD, but if I try to go to Redcliffe or Redcliffe Village I see the cutscene then CTD ☹️ This would be my first time beating the game and I really hope I can fix this.

My system:

3500k @ 4.4GHz

8GB RAM

RadeonHD 7850

Win 8 64bit on a SSD

1TB 5200rpm with Steam folder

So far I've tried setting affinity to cores 2 and 3, or just 3; cleaned and updated graphics drivers; applying a 4gb patch that did not agree with Ultimate Edition which I was skeptical of because Task Manager says daorigins.exe is only using about 800MB of RAM, and verifying game files with Steam (they should be sending me 1.05 right?)

I'm running the game with a few recently updated mods, but have gotten 35 hours in with no problems at all so I would hate to start over ☹️

Any help would be appreciated and I hope I didn't miss anything obvious.