Carrying, piles and carts

Everything has a weight. A log is 15 kg, so when you're starting out 5 logs is about all you can manage. Past 45 kg you start to slow down, and at 75 kg you can't pick up any more. Those numbers go up as your Strength does, to twice as much at Strength 50. If something won't fit in your pack, it goes on a pile on the ground beside you. See your backpack for using and setting down what you're carrying.

Piles#

Set things down and they go in a pile. A pile holds 50 things before you start a new one beside it. Out in the open anyone can open a pile and take from it, so don't leave your good stuff lying around. Inside a settlement it's safe from everyone but the people who live there. Building works from piles close by that you're allowed to take from, which saves a lot of carrying. Piles are fine for a day's work, but at home a stock yard keeps things sorted and out of other people's hands.

Carts#

You build carts from the Build menu, under Works. Pull one and it follows behind you. Carts are for goods: logs, planks, iron bars and fittings, rock and ore, and hides. Food, seeds and arrows stay in your pack. Anything you can't carry goes into the cart first before it goes on the ground. Logs from a tree you fell or a stump you pull while you're in the shafts go straight into the cart, and so do the ore and stone from an outcrop you break and the dirt, clay or sand you dig. That way you can clear a stand of timber, work a ledge or dig out a cellar without stopping to load, and only once the cart is full does anything come to your pack. Full, a handcart slows you down quite a bit. A horse or an ox in the shafts pulls it a lot easier.

Loading a whole pile into the cart, tipping your pack into it, or unloading the lot asks you first, so a stray tap doesn't empty everything onto the ground. If you only want some of it, open the cart and use the buttons on each row instead.

A wagon holds a ton and a half, but it's too heavy for you to pull by hand. You need a horse for it, or a bull yoked as an ox. A horse is quicker, but an ox barely slows down for a full load.

A cart is yours wherever it is. Nobody else can pull it, open it or empty it, unless you trust them. Tap someone and choose Trust, and they can pull your cart and load or empty it like it was theirs.

Empty your own cart and you can break it up for about half of what went into it.

You can give your cart a name too. Tap it and choose Give it a name, and from then on it shows as that name with yours after it, so everyone can tell whose is whose when there are a few parked together. A name can be up to 16 letters. Choose Rename to change it, or clear it out to take the name off.

Wear on the wheels#

Carts wear as you use them, mostly in the wheels. A heavy load wears them quicker, and rough ground more than a road. Inspect a cart to see how its wheels are, and once they're getting worn, tap it and choose Put on a new wheel. If you leave it too long a wheel breaks and the cart stops where it is until you fix it. Nothing in it is lost. See Wear and mending.

An iron axle#

Carts come with a greased wooden axle. Once you're Smithing 9 you can forge an iron axle from 2 bars, tap your cart and fit it. It runs truer, so an empty handcart takes hardly anything out of you and a load drags a good deal less. It stays with the cart, and if you ever break the cart up you get the axle back.

Those are shares of your walking pace. It helps behind a horse or an ox too, just less, since they hardly feel a load anyway.