Okay, so through the use of a lot of tweaks of the settings (the process of which was pretty much trial and error; thus I can't really give much depth where there is none), I have found that my current issue that prevents printing is one of two things:
A) I'm printing too cold and that grinds down the filament eventually. Easy enough to avoid.
B) The filament is buckling in the extruder.

Problem B is where I am stuck. I can't tell if I'm printing too much material too quickly and that's smashing the filament, if I'm printing too slow and the filament is heating up in the extruder, if I'm printing too hot in general, or if it's because of some other cause.

Below are two pictures of removed filament, you can clearly see where the filament has kinked and is preventing further extrusion.


If you know what causes this, I'd greatly appreciate tips on how to prevent this.