What It Does
NiftyCarts is a Fabric port of the AstikorCarts mod, built by jmb05. It adds horse drawn carts to Minecraft, covering travel, hauling goods, and working a farm. The mod needs to be installed on both the client and the server, and it only runs on Fabric.
The Six Carts
The mod adds six distinct carts, each built for a different job.
The Supply Cart holds a double chest worth of storage and has one seat in the back for a rider. The Hand Cart is a smaller version with 27 inventory slots, but it can only be pulled by a player rather than an animal.
The Animal Cart carries two seats, letting two players ride together on whatever mob is pulling it.
Two carts are built for farm work. The Plow has room for three tools, hoes, shovels, or axes, and uses whatever tool is loaded on the block beneath it, tilling soil, making paths, or stripping logs as it moves. A Seed Drill holds nine seed slots and plants those seeds on farmland as it's pulled across a field. This Reaper harvests crops, and a player has to sit in its seat to operate it.
How You Use Them
You attach or detach a nearby cart from whatever you're riding with the Action Key, which is bound to R by default. Here's the thing, tapping Sprint once turns on Slow Mode, which slows down both your mount and the cart behind it.
Compatibility
NiftyCarts only supports the Fabric loader. According to its Modrinth listing, it covers these Minecraft versions: 1.21.11, 1.21.8, 1.21.7, 1.21.6, 1.21.5, 1.21.1, 1.21, and 1.20.1. That's a specific list of releases, not a continuous range, so don't assume every point release in between is covered. Both the client and the server need the mod installed for it to work.
Who It's For
If you play on a Fabric server and want a low-tech alternative to minecarts or elytra for moving goods and people around, this fits. It suits survival and semi-vanilla servers where horse drawn transport and light automation, the Seed Drill and Reaper in particular, add some flavor without changing core gameplay. Because a cart can only be detached with a key bind and needs a mount to pull it, this works best where players are used to keeping horses or other rideable animals around.
License
NiftyCarts is released under the MIT License.
