Quick answer: Unreal Blueprint actor's Event Tick running before its async-loaded class fully spawned? Tick fires before BeginPlay completes - guard tick with a 'ready' flag.

Newly spawned actor's tick references components that haven't constructed; crash.

Guard tick with ready flag

if (!bReady) return;

Set bReady in BeginPlay; tick skips until then.

Or disable tick until ready

SetActorTickEnabled(false) at construction; enable in BeginPlay. Cleaner.

Audit tick prerequisites

Each tick's reads. If any is BeginPlay-initialized, guard or disable.

“Tick lifecycle overlaps construction. The overlap is the bug surface.”

If your actor's Tick assumes BeginPlay ran, the guard pattern is non-optional. Document.

Related reading