Things you wish you knew before getting a ball python

[Caali]

Oh and what would you suggest for keeping the humidity up

Maybe put some moss inside your ball python's hides. That already helps the humidity quite a lot (and they spend a lot of time in their hides anyway).
If you want to have a beautiful, natural-looking terrarium, I would suggest you go for cypress mulch. It's good at keeping humidity. You could also use coconut mulch but that is a bit dirtier and makes it more difficult to clean.
If you want a rack or if you want to quarantine the snake, then I would suggest you use newspaper pages. They're cheap and don't drain a lot of humidity. You can also go for paper towels.
You shouldn't use Reptibark, pine shavings, spruce bark, pine bark pellets or artificial gras.
I use cypress mulch and I have to spray about twice a week.