Originally posted by Webbman:

you have to know how to use the cart. If your going uphill you cant load as much as this is a game of physics. Cart also works great for coming down from the mountains and works pretty good on roads that are made. What your loading is also important since a stack of iron isnt the same as a stack of wood. I think they work great.

In any place that the cart would be useful, the time it takes to MAKE it useful makes it not worth it, at all. The only thing that makes carts worth anything is mods, really.

As for "works great coming down the mountain," yeah, sure. Watch it tumble down, break, and scatter it's cargo all over the moutainside. You'll spend more time looking for the cargo boxes than actually getting the stuff to your base or ship. MUCH more time than if you made several trips in almost all cases.

If you spend a zillion hours making perfectly levelled paths, it'll work out for you, but by the time you spend the time in an area enough to do that, you've pretty much been able to strip an area of most of the valuable resources you need from it. I say this as someone who has spent those zillion hours.

Carts are not worth it in vanilla.

[EDIT] Well, I guess they might be okay in SOME swamps. I tend to path stuff out there anyhow.