I'm trying to understand mob drops.
As an example, I've got a recipe that uses brute cores. These are supposed to come from blue brute jellies. A blue, brute jelly is different from a normal jelly, and what descriptive text I've seen so far indicates that the cores of these jellies is what makes them tick.
Yet over in the bazaar, someone just said that brute cores drop starting on floor 9.
I don't understand this, neither from game design, nor game balance, nor consistency.
As I see it:
If a monster is supposed to drop X, then it can drop X anywhere it can be found.
If you fight a monster and not have a chance of getting it's X, then you're not being rewarded for the challenge.
If you say "That drop is too valuable to give on early levels", then why is that monster on early levels?
If your goal is to say "This recipe should not be seen/used before this level", well, why is the recipe so easy to get at such a low level?
Enemies scale in power with the floor they're on. Many enemies appear across all floors from beginning to end. Enemy drops are based on their difficulty, so you are always being rewarded appropriately for the challenge. If Brute Jellies dropped the same items regardless of their power, they would be unrewarding at later levels, and over-rewarding at early levels.
Personally, I think that all Brute Jellies, regardless of their level, should have a chance to drop Brute Cores, but that chance should increase with level. Maybe it already does work this way, but before floor 9, the chance is so low that no one has found one yet.