You need to keep the curse or the extra upgrade gets removed as well.

Exploding curse works really good with spirit bow as the explosion takes place next to the target rather then where you are.

Not when there is more than one line in a row.

I think forgetting the layout might be a bit too hard and easily cheesed by taking a screenshot, but I agree that the Ascension can be made harder

It's really easy to do even with no PoH because of the healing you get on boss floors.