I was in the same circumstances when I started. But then I asked around which helped me properly configure it.

working on my end

You can find plenty of versions on Demonoid https://www.dnoid.to/. I’ve used them on bare metal and on virtualization.

I just checked my DNS blocked list. Topaz software do download their models from their repositories, but I haven’t come across any issues. About safety, well, its upto your threat model.

Mullvad or Proton

It’s not really a hassle to configure your i2p node. I2p network recently went through a DDOS attack. Even during that point of time I had no issue surfing/torrenting.