I posted a thread a couple days ago about this, and got directed here for further guidance. Three things I noticed last night:
1) I played for hours without issue with a new character and a new Constant world (i.e. both generated in 1.4.4.2), but after I took that new character to a pre-1.4.4 Constant world to grab something, my game crashed with the same error we all keep getting in our logs (Exception: System.IO.IOException: The system cannot find message text for message number 0x%1 in the message file for %2) after I returned to the new world and died to an explosive trap underground. Before I went to the old world with the new character, the new character had died... um, a lot... in the new world without any crashes.
2) Now that I think of it, I remember my crashes happening right as the game's announced something to me in the lower-left of the screen (e.g. Goblin Tinkerer moving in, death text from the explosive trap). Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me?
3) After the explosive trap crash, I tried the multiplayer workaround (Steam multiplayer disabled, password-locked), to great success... the funny thing was, Windows Defender Firewall blocked the outgoing connection, so my "multiplayer" game never made it online. But hey — if it lets me enjoy the update while we wait, I'm not complaining.