I may try this.
I should also mention: when I downgraded to 2.1, my graphics were completely trippy, I still navigated my way to using OTPHelper and getting the otp, but I'm wondering if something bad happened because of that? I got no errors when downgrading, though, nor when getting the otp. But when I booted up my N3DS, had those rainbow graphics until I restored my old sysNAND.
Also, I can't load any of the other payloads either. Emu9, Decrypt9 or Uncart. But I can load all of them via homebrew launcher. Based on all of this, would downgrading to 2.1 and re-doing the process be a plan or is that a bad idea?