I'm working my way through the first BG and have just reached the grand city itself. During my travels I've relied on auto-pause for enemies sighted, enemies gone, weapon unusable (although this doesn't seem to work), trap found and spell cast.

Without all this, I'm pretty sure I would have perished in many-a-bloody-fashion than I have done.

It is my first ever go in PC D&D games so I'll forgive myself for being such a wimp!

However, I'm intrigued with how hardcore people are or have been when playing the series. Honest answers on auto-pause options and difficulty level please and the winner doesn't get a prize but does get plenty of kudos!

edit: I'd also like to hear from fellow "auto-pause as much as poss" gamers so I know I'm not alone :(

Auto-pause is vital mainly because you have to manage multiple characters (playing single player). Yes there is AI available for your henchmen, but it's woefully inadequate.

If you just had to worry about one character, then that auto-pause is far less necessary.

Players who have played the game, know it pretty well, know all the enemies and strategies, probably find re-plays way too easy, and soloing or auto-pause might present an extra challenge they are still able to overcome. For me, though, if I'm that familiar with a game, it's time to move on and play a different game. (And after that sale bundle that included Icewind Dale, Planescape, Temple of Elemental Evil, and whatever else I got, I have plenty of different games to which I can move on.)

I prefer auto-pause. If i want more challenge, I find mods that increase tactical difficulty, not managament difficulty. Also, you can use custom scripts for the party. Some are pretty good. Definitely better than game scripts. Check out G3 to find some.

I use auto-pause for Trap Found (because you'll walk over it accidentally about 50% of the time otherwise) and Party Member Killed (because it means an automatic reload for me). In BG2, I will also set it for Spell Cast when I'm doing the Improved Alacrity / Time Stop trick, but not at other times. It's definitely useful, but I manually pause CONSTANTLY so the auto-pause isn't quite as necessary for me.

I normally play on Core Rules, but I will switch it down lower to ensure that wizard spells get learned correctly and for ensuring max HPs on level-up. It just saves time and reloading. There are some (super) hardcore players who will NEVER RELOAD EVER, but honestly that's silly. In PnP games, there's no reloading (usually) but you also have a DM, in person, who's there to make sure everyone is enjoying themselves. CRPGs don't have that, and so they rely on (and require) save scumming, and so the games are much more difficult than a comparable PnP version would be. If you destroyed everything easily your first time through, it wouldn't be fun.

As you do more playthroughs and get better at the game, you can start imposing more limits on yourself to increase the challenge, or mod the difficulty. Or just move the difficulty slider up so everything does double damage. Really though, it's basically a single-player game even if you're doing co-op, so you shouldn't worry about whether the community thinks you're hardcore enough.

I didn't intend to sound like I was seeking community approval - I know I'm an average (and that's being generous to myself) gamer. It was just a light-hearted shout out to compare different abilities and woo at gamers who have hard-core settings and laugh in the face of those that don't.....like me :)

I play on Core rules, but I'm also a chronic manual pause-spammer and I have it auto-pause on detecting a trap and when an enemy is sighted.

I usually don't use auto-pause but I pause a lot manually. I use it when I start to cast spells like Improved Alacrity / Time Stop combo regulary. Unfortunately it usually does more harm than good because I am not used to it and and press Space myself thus unpausing the game and losing a lot of valuable time.

I usually play Core rules too.

Core rules except max HP on levelup & sleep anywhere.
Usually no autopause, but have started using autopause on spellcasting in the really tough battles.

I didn't know auto-pause existed on my first BG1-playthroughs. And I played them on core and with Sword Coast Stratagems installed for difficulty enhancement (my first vanilla attempt I quited because, using a walkthrough, it became way too easy. I made a new install using Tutu, with the Hard Times mod and SCS for difficulty).

Later I learned about auto-pause through the fora, but I only use it in BGII, where spell-casting battles are more frequent and more intense. It took some thime however, to learn to use manual pause sparingly: I did a lot of accidental unpauses when manualy hitting the space bar at the same time the game auto-pauses.

What makes core rules+Hard Times+SCS very doable though is: I played 1st Edition AD&D in my teens (it's very similar to the 2nd edition rules BG uses), I don't do solo's, I don't do reloads, all my parties are 'efficient parties': a mix of all classes instead of the challenge of warrior only/mage only or something like that. Plus I use the 100% spell learning and NWN-style level-up tweaks from the Gibberlings3 BG2-Tweakpack.

But it ain't hard to image that if someone had experience with playing the game each year since it came out in 1998, they know it well enough to do solo-runs and/or SCS no-reloads on core difficulty or higher.

I don't laugh at newbies however: the only fun is how nice it is to see new people still getting to enjoy the game after so many years. I was a newbie myself when the game itself was already 10 years old.

Now that's hardcore! <bows>

"I thank you for your compliment"

I normally play BG1 on the default difficulty. I will admit I do pause frequently, but its more of a reflex than something that is needed (like pausing and then looking around the map to see where I need to go). I've never used auto-pause enemy sighted, although I've been playing the game on and off for many years so I suppose I have the benefit of knowing what I can expect enemy wise.