Delay on startup (occurred out of of nowhere?)

Hi folks,

For two weeks now I observe a strange behaviour. When starting up PoE, before the GGG gears logo, the game seems to be stuck with black screen. The logfile shows this pretty good:

2022/03/22 10:44:15 265407828 f954c64b [INFO Client 7864] [DEVICE] Debug layer: OFF
2022/03/22 10:44:15 265407828 3cd2c722 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Supported instance extension: VK_KHR_device_group_creation
2022/03/22 10:44:15 265407828 3cd2c722 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Supported instance extension: VK_KHR_external_fence_capabilities
2022/03/22 10:44:15 265407828 3cd2c722 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Supported instance extension: VK_KHR_external_memory_capabilities
2022/03/22 10:44:15 265407828 3cd2c722 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Supported instance extension: VK_KHR_external_semaphore_capabilities
2022/03/22 10:44:15 265407828 3cd2c722 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Supported instance extension: VK_KHR_get_physical_device_properties2
2022/03/22 10:44:15 265407828 3cd2c722 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Supported instance extension: VK_KHR_get_surface_capabilities2
2022/03/22 10:44:15 265407828 3cd2c722 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Supported instance extension: VK_KHR_surface
2022/03/22 10:44:15 265407828 3cd2c722 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Supported instance extension: VK_KHR_win32_surface
2022/03/22 10:44:15 265407828 3cd2c722 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Supported instance extension: VK_EXT_debug_report
2022/03/22 10:44:15 265407828 3cd2c722 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Supported instance extension: VK_EXT_debug_utils
2022/03/22 10:44:15 265407828 3cd2c722 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Supported instance extension: VK_EXT_swapchain_colorspace
2022/03/22 10:44:35 265428062 3cd2d4ef [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Found matching physical device using LUID 0000017F91C21E58 (AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT)
2022/03/22 10:44:35 265428062 3cd2d760 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Memory type: heap index = 0, property = { DeviceLocal }
2022/03/22 10:44:35 265428062 3cd2d760 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Memory type: heap index = 1, property = { HostVisible | HostCoherent }
2022/03/22 10:44:35 265428062 3cd2d760 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Memory type: heap index = 2, property = { DeviceLocal | HostVisible | HostCoherent }
2022/03/22 10:44:35 265428062 3cd2d760 [INFO Client 7864] [VULKAN] Memory type: heap index = 1, property = { HostVisible | HostCoherent | HostCached }

There's a 20 second wait(?) in today's start up. Sometimes it's 18 seconds, sometimes 23, but roughly 20 seconds all the time. Only when it occurred for the first time, on March 11th, it was 40 seconds.
I don't remember any patching on that day and I have switched to Vulkan earlier. All log file entries prio to March 11th show less than one second between those two entries in question.

PoE in general is stable as always, i.e. I don't see random crashes or any other oddity.

Does anybody else observe this?
Any help is appreciated! :)

Regards
Zimtdrop