I always kind of assume that if they don't drop a part of their body, it's because it was destroyed.
That can possibly be an explanation, but it doesn't explain why you don't have any sort of ability to, say, choose not to attack a head if you want a skull, or the like. Also, drops can be something like 2% chances of not getting a really difficult-to-destroy-unless-you're-doing-it-on-purpose part, like a horn from a bull.
At least in games like Etrian Odyssey, there are conditions for different items, like getting lumber from a plant monster if you kill it with a slashing (axe-like) weapon, but not if you use fire spells (or getting charcoal or something like that if you use fire).
That can possibly be an explanation, but it doesn't explain why you don't have any sort of ability to, say, choose not to attack a head if you want a skull, or the like. Also, drops can be something like 2% chances of not getting a really difficult-to-destroy-unless-you're-doing-it-on-purpose part, like a horn from a bull.
At least in games like Etrian Odyssey, there are conditions for different items, like getting lumber from a plant monster if you kill it with a slashing (axe-like) weapon, but not if you use fire spells (or getting charcoal or something like that if you use fire).
I didn't mean that in the sense of "it was cut up or burned or something," but in the sense of, "the monsters all disappear in a cloud of magic when you kill them, so it's amazing that ANYTHING is EVER left behind."
I didn't mean that in the sense of "it was cut up or burned or something," but in the sense of, "the monsters all disappear in a cloud of magic when you kill them, so it's amazing that ANYTHING is EVER left behind."
That depends a lot on the game. Often "disappearing" is just what they do in 2D because death animations would double the enemy animation budget, and in 3D, they want to keep things PG-rated. It's only in games like Final Fantasy X or Rune Factory where they actually explicitly have monsters disappear as a plot point.
In cases like the aforementioned Etrian Odyssey, they might have something like a 100% chance of a giant ant leg if you get a kill with an axe, but a 20% chance of a giant ant carapace for any kill that doesn't have a special item trigger, so if the carapace wasn't somehow rendered completely unsalvagable, why does the other item not appear all the time?
