There's an old speedrunning trick for this: If you don't put new clothes on each day and instead keep re-wearing them, it stops growing.

The game tries to prevent this with the stench debuff and the hit to your cleanliness stat, but you can counter that with routing to avoid enounters with other players. Then the debuff does nothing and the cleanliness stat only matters once it gets low enough to trigger damage to your HP.

So it really only works for specific builds, but if done right it can save you a lot of time.

What do you mean they added a large negative modifier to the mental health stat when using this strat? I guess this works better on earlier patches before personal hygiene became so important in the meta.

You guys need to up the DPS. You can also easily cheese this boss: set the pile of laundry on fire.

It’s a matter of not feeding the monster, if you have less clothes, the monster can’t feed on them.

ontop of dps, debuff the boss' resources so it has a lower health pool (reduce your clothes and clothes only worn once on non-humid days/less active days can be reused)

you need to use DoTs, like fire damage for example, this'll negate the regeneration.