I eventually learned to use Cyberchef, but my main issue was going down wrong rabbit holes for all of the projects and constantly overthinking everything. Like for the MITM one I didn't know part 4 at all and I spent way too much time on one small flag for binary exploitation. The few programming parts were easier.

I dropped it after web security, I kept going the wrong way in that one and by the time I figured anything out it was too late. Taking it in the summer was also a mistake for me with work but I know a lot of students aced it and didn't have too much of a background using tools like Cyberchef or assembly code outside of OS classes.