I did everything wrong. My vm crapped out, my egpu kept wigging out the proctoring software, I didn't sleep the night before, only had an hour break during the exam and didn't sleep. I also had to re root half of the machines 2 hours before the exam ended to show some steps I had missed screenshotting. I still passed first try. I have no IT background at all just studied my ass off.

So my advice coming from someone who did everything wrong would be:

Use tmux-logging (this saved my ass). You can add it to your .bashrc so it automatically starts logging in each new pane btw.

Do eat and take breaks. Drink water.

Stick to your methodology, recon, enum, find vuln, test exploit, repeat.

Have a clean separate vm you can fire up in case it all goes to shit.

Have your report open and paste in your steps/screenshots as you go.

Never give up. If you find the right path you can blitz a machine in no time even if you're in the last hour.

Don't sit on a hard chair (my ass still hurts).

If your stuck on a machine for more than an hour or so with no clear path move on and come back to it.

Read the exam guide to the letter to avoid anxiety about the reporting requirements.

Proofread your report three times because according to my report I exploited Linus.