Game Crashing on specific occasions

Hello everybody
”Oh my yet another games crashes complaint” you might say, I know you might be bored of hearing this, I have found tons of game crashes question during my search for a solution but ending up here was merely the result of me thinking that I tried everything I could but found no solution..

My hardware in general is CPU i7 4790K, 8GBs of RAM, GTX 960 running on win 8.1 (more details can be provided if needed of course)
Game is a Steam version
I didn’t have the chance to play the game after finishing maybe about a month or two ago, I never uninstalled it so I just kept all the updates coming. Once the DLC was out I tried to run the game and the first thing i noticed was the game crashing the moment I visited Velen in order to get to the 7 cats inn.
Friend told me to lower the graphics specs, so I did, really found no reason why i should do that considering my hardware, but i did, and the game kept running smoothly.
Until at some point the game started not letting me enter dialogues.
There are dialogues that the game just won’t let me enter.
Like that side quest call "Without a Trace" the game crashes the moment I try to talk to teh herbalist every-single-time.
I tried all sets of graphics specs down to the bottom lowest ones, tried using gerald with no clothes, with no AA and no hair works.
I tried it combined with any of the frame limits and all types of window mode or fullscreen. From the nvidia panel i tried any option related with PhysX, I made sure at my nvidia panel to have power management set to max performance, to have texture quality set to high quality. I made sure I have the latest nvidia drivers and that my DirectX is up to date.
I EVGA PrecisionX16 to make sure my GPU is properly cooled and to be frank all my temps are so smooth all the time.
I tried running around the map through forests and cities in velen and novigrad and the game is so smooth no matter what specs i chose are and my GPU temps are pretty steady with my fan control set to aggressive RPM behavior.

The game is merely unplayable to me now.
what else should I do?

Please please help me.
My top fav game is in my hands and I just can’t play it

Game Crashing on specific occasions