I really like grinding on games like this, but i can't on this one because everytime i open the map it gets progressively difficult. I wanted to bounce around the sewers and goblin cave for a few hours but when i heard about the time scaling and got out of the beginning area, i was already at difficulty 3. Can i disable that somehow? I really want to grind and explore in this game.

I don't know what mods there are but the base game has a method of lowering world difficulty. while in town, one of the random events is a priest and if you approach him and donate items to him, he'll lower the world difficulty. up to 10 levels per event. 

using the above method you can more or less keep difficulty down just know that world difficulty only increases every 25 points so at 25-50-75-100

oh nice. Thanks, guys. I was really concerned about the viability of grinding for days on end. It's my favourite thing to do on games.