Gen 3 Prius Engine Coolant Recovery Tank Pressurized, head gasket?

Great all and thanks much! Good encouragement and also love the document uploads. I've got this thing much of the way torn down. Luckily I do have another car so can take my time, I generally try to take my time on this kind of project to use it as a learning/therapeutic time in the man cave . I have watched the videos referenced on head gasket replace many times which helped me to dive in. My big question now as I hope to get to head gasket today is deciding what to do with the head. I pulled off the egr and cooler and it was totally smoked, probably passing little to no exhaust, so figure that must have smoked head gasket. Everything else so far is looking clean and well taken care of so hoping head will not be too crazy with warping. Deciding if I should take head to a shop to be gone over in detail. As this project is somewhat experimental and trying to stay low cost part of me thinks just check it out quick for major issues and if it looks good clean it up well and slap the new gasket on and try it out. I'm sure many will think this crazy but my big concern is waiting a week or more to get my head back and losing momentum. Also as gasket maker was brought up, I'm trying to decide what is the best material to use for this, I know Toyota has their own but hoping to grab something from the local auto shop and have heard that most permatex will be okay for the one form in place gasket. I have some high temp red on hand and wondering if that would be not a good idea for that gasket. Otherwise I have a kit with all the rubber gaskets I will need but that is the one thing I still need to pick up.

 

Also I have seen this question come up a few times and was thinking through why the blocked EGR causes overheating as my simple brain thinks why not just block the egr and stop hot gases from going into intake to end this problem, but I have also seen discussions and now understand how this works to keep things cooler actually. A decent video for anyone who is still trying to figure this out is here.