Like I said, mainly quality of life gripes.

I get the purpose of the cart, but I find it annoying and cumbersome. Once you get a Karve, any ore nodes near the cost are lucrative stops. Sure it can't carry nearly as much as a cart can, but sailing doesn't drain stamina and is in my opinion a 'safer' method of travel.

The game seems to encourage you to build little trails to and from resources but the time spent setting this up is longer than just making a couple of boat runs. Based on the wiki I understand there are items that are prohibitively heavy (dragon eggs) and as you said stronger armor weighs you down more but overall the cart just feels like a bit of a liability. It would have been a little better if it could be pulled by tamed animals (like a team of boars or something) so you could shoot at attacking enemies perhaps. But tugging it around is awkward. Also wish there were higher tiers of cart, perhaps having more slots or being less negatively affected in terms of handling.