Looks like hostfile.conf was being re-generated to the default everytime deluge starts; I've put it as Read-Only and for now it seems to be fixed.
Thanks again!

Thanks for all your work!

Only issue I'm having is that Connection Manager doesn't remember settings. Every time I shut down and open client, only localclient is there, and I have to manually re-enter host, username and password to re-connect. Any ideas?