Just finished the Gideon questline and I must say wow--what an incredible challenge and subplot line! The Lovecraftian monster eye thingys were very difficult initially, regularly driving my party members insane, but I found out, almost accidentally, that you can insta-kill them with a drain magic spell, so as long as my insane front liners and summons could hold the line and avoid beating on each other too much, my necromancer could wipe the floor with them all. I never could figure out the dark fairies though--when confronted by those, I just ran/reloaded. The boss took me a couple tries, as his spells beat through my magic shielding and, after that, could one-shot all of my party members except my Giant warrior, but my bard got a lucky paralysis song in and then my fighters had a free round before the insanity from his minions kicked in to beat him to death. I confess I used Weak's Steam guide for some of the puzzles, as I couldn't figure out that you had to sleep in specific places to move the quest along but other than that I managed to work things out pretty much on my own. .
Few more follow up questions on mechanics and suggestions:
(1) Where would you suggest I go after Gideon? Looks like I can go to Harradan Grove or Waterport next. Does it make sense to do one over the other first?
(2) Is the escaped slave outside Gideon recruitable? I tried to recruit him both before and after I completed the questline, but got rejected both times.
(3) I raised Medea from the dead, but then didn't recruit her. Is she gone forever, or has she moved to a random encounter somewhere?
(4) Like, I imagine, most newbs, I didn't plan ahead to multiclass, so I'm basically closed off to some of the advanced classes, such as pirate, assassin, and jester. Are there NPCs in those classes available for recruitment somewhere in the game if I want to try them?
(5) Every now and then during combat, a dramatic rift will play (sounds kinda like the killing theme from "Psycho") when one of my characters takes an action, even if that action is fairly undramatic (such as drinking a healing potion). Is that rift intended to signify something? A round that, had my character attacked, would have been a critical hit perhaps?
(6) I see feedback for party-wide buffs on the HUD, but although I can cast single-target buffs out of combat, I'm not seeing similar feedback. Does casting these spells out of combat make a difference in combat, or do they have to be cast again while in combat in order to do anything? Before I fought the Gideon boss, I buffed my characters with a level 4 cerebral shield, but his minions still managed to turn almost all of my characters insane with their physical and gaze attacks. Did my buffs not work, or does cerebral shield only protect against SPELLS that cause insanity, and I was supposed to use either gaze protection or rely on armorplate for gaze and physical attacks that cause that effect? It's difficult to understand.
