This is surprisingly the first major bug I've encountered with the Watcher, until now everything has gone pretty smoothly.
I'm currently in the post-game playing on PS4, (431 cycles and 57 hrs). All endings aquired, was planning to go collect all the new pearls.
I'm in Migration Path, trying to see if I can 'clean up' the region. Was in the far west shelter, then made my way to the next shelter in the east. After hibernating in that shelter, touching ripple eggs now crashes the game, consistently. If I don't touch them, I seem to be able to progress normally, but I am a bit suspicious. I don't want to accidentally make this bug a permanent issue on the save file by hibernating again.
I'm not too worried at the moment, since I have dial warp charged. Was just touching the eggs out of habit. But if this crashing issue doesn't go away after I use the warp I wouldn't be able to charge it again.
I don't have a clue what this issue could be caused by. I'm pretty sure I collected eggs completely normally the previous cycle. I didn't even do any warping or anything, just went from one shelter to the next.
Would definitely like to know if anyone else has encountered something like this. It's really weird to suddenly have a major glitch after 57 hours with no persistent bugs at all!