There’s an NPC after you save Marin village with a yellow scarf that shows up at the Dasha pagan secret garden in Sacrament with the effigies. When you walk close to him, you see a triggered combat status and the input to talk to him disappears and you cannot talk to him and I gotta walk all the way to the cook’s house to go back to a normal status and be able to interact and talk to NPC’s again.
I got the nearly same Bug with some differences.
Same effects: the NPCs would stop allowing me to speak to them. However it happened to me twice before ever entering the Marin Forests. A third time now, after Roots that Bind quest completed. I did not see the Combat Status trigger that you mention, but I likely was just not paying enough attention.
For me, it felt like I would climb the ladder there, but the NPCs would sometimes just get annoyed enough at me for it.
