Mfg Does not want me to have fun with STM32F0, RDP and SWD pin alt Funct

[oaltxf4o]

Well, I have been on here a long time, but I figured I would make my first post.

I have been playing with a Shark ION RV750 robot vacuum. I have the important bits of the PCB mapped, and I have started to try and play with the software side.
To access the mcu, there is an 8pin header with: nRESET, SWCLK, SWDIO, VDD, GND, USART3_RX, and USART3_TX

Attempting to connect an ST-Link to the header quickly reveals a first roadblock... RDP Level 1.
No Problem, we know of some good guides on getting the firmware despite this setback. 
Eh...? Can't assert nRESET (before I mapped out the full nRESET trace), oh an external 10k pull up... gone!
Still can't get anything when using the firmware extraction python script. there is nothing else on the SWDIO and SWCLK lines.
My assumption is they assigned some alternate function to SWDIO that locks out any SWD connections once the main program starts.
Even when using a Jlink with Openocd, I can't seem to get the timing window right.

Good news is I did find the USART Bootloader interface, and I extracted the full Bootloader(it seems to be the stock ST bootloader), but still no Flash readout.

I think at some point when i was banging my head away at the brick wall, I did get a SWD Main Program connection at some point... Sadly it was one of those moments of throwing so many things in the pot, I don't know what the key was.

No real end goal with this rabbit hole I have gotten myself into other than just learning... Maybe some more wise heathens can help guide me?