@InsomniacOG said:
Do you believe it’s possible to complete this challenge with GDB? Mainly since I have no clue how IDA works
To find out what is going on, yes, GDB might be of help. But in order to not get lost, it is advised to first find out what part of the program you want to investigate with GDB. If IDA is too confusing for you, I’d suggest trying Ghidra. It is pretty intuitive to use, and also has a pseudo-c decompiler built in 