How to slow down the gamestage progression ?

[URMarty]

I am playing on insane idifficulty with my friends, it would be a cool to know if there are any ways to slow the progression down ? Specifically the gamestage

[Ozarck]

From the Wiki (so it might be out of date or wrong): "Each player's Game Stage is calculated as follows: ([Player Level] + [Adjusted Days Alive]) * [Difficulty Factor] (1.2)"

So, you can reduce XP gain in the game settings so that your level remains low for longer, or maybe increase the length of days. Longer days mean you get more done before that uptick in Game stage, right?

[Tox]

Originally posted by URMarty:

I am playing on insane idifficulty with my friends, it would be a cool to know if there are any ways to slow the progression down ? Specifically the gamestage

I am legitimately questioning why you would want it any slower after its nerf for 1.0, but if you're serious:
Avoid taking quests from traders
Play as a nomad, looting as you go and never open the challenges menu to register your completions for exp.
Put bluntly, the less you do, the slower your progression... but that'll get to the point where you do next to nothing between horde nights, and as they progress in difficulty you'll soon find yourself woefully unprepared...

But seriously, I did an a21 run before 1.0 came out, and found myself stupidly well equipped and mass producing ammo by about day 30... in 1.0, granted my rng luck was poor in some aspects, but for example it took 60 days to reach the stage of mass producing ammo... if that's not slow enough for you then there's no other advice to give except "do less so your progression is gimped even further"

[CatPerson]

Originally posted by URMarty:

I am playing on insane idifficulty with my friends, it would be a cool to know if there are any ways to slow the progression down ? Specifically the gamestage

I have no idea if your thread started in the modding forum or a moderator moved it, but if you were looking for a modding way to achieve this, it's in the (game install directory) Data\Config\gamestages.xml

<gamestages>
	<!-- *** CONFIG_SETTINGS -->
	<config
		daysAliveChangeWhenKilled="2"

		difficultyBonus="1.2"

		startingWeight ="1"
		diminishingReturns ="0.5"

		lootBonusEvery = "12"
		lootBonusMaxCount = "30"
		lootBonusScale = "25"
		lootWanderingBonusEvery = "3"
		lootWanderingBonusScale = "15"
	/>

You would change the "difficultyBonus" number to something smaller. Example: .8

You can actually put it down so low (".01") that your gamestage will effectively remain 0 for a very very very very long time, if not "forever", hahaha. I think some POI's will still have higher level zombies, however, because of their POI level.

Also, I do not know how this works for MP. eg, if all of you have to make the tweak/change in your own game copy, or just the host/person acting as the server-host etc.

[Mardoin69]

Aside from all those other suggestions...
You can change the XP modifier in settings. When they introduced that setting, a lot of people increased it thinking they'd level up faster--which they did. But, it also came with the side affect of increasing GameStage faster too--too fast for a lot of people. So, the reverse is also true. You could decrease the XP modifier and that would help keep the 'GameStage' from rising AS quickly. But, it's also tied to number of days in game and # of days without dying so... CatPerson's suggestion maybe the answer you're looking for.