valheim cart surfing: test
3testing cart surfing to answer 3 basic questions:
1. can you surf the cart without using stamina? yes.
2. can you surf the cart consistently without falling out of the cart? mostly, at least in calm water.
3. can you get back into the cart if you fall out? it depends.
#3 is the critical one, here. if you fall out of the back of the cart due to waves, enemies, or your own movement, you need to be able to get back in if you are trying to cross a large body of water, otherwise you are doomed to drown if far from shore.
oddly, you cannot get back into an empty cart, as the back edge floats too high, at least in calm water. you will simply push the cart while swimming into it. large waves might afford some opportunity to get in, but those same waves might also increase the chance of you getting tossed back out.
with 1260 lbs, which makes 2 "boxes" on the front side of the cart, it actually tips the cart enough at rest that you can swim above the back edge and therefore get back in.
with ~3000 lbs or so, the cart seems to be too heavy to push.
so, with no weight (unsafe over long distances, can't re-enter if you fall out), or too much weight (can't move it), cart surfing doesn't work. kind of a narrow window for success. and considering the medium boat (karve) also costs bronze, you dont really get the cart any earlier than you would otherwise get the boat, which has 4 storage slots and can therefore take about the same weight as the partially-loaded cart. the use case here is potentially if you somehow get stranded far from base, your karve gets destroyed and the bronze nails fall to the sea floor, but you still have a cart, you could technically surf the cart over deep water.
i may wait for some stormy weather and then try this again, see how the waves affect #1 2 and 3 above.