Stormbird Cannon not dropping.

[LuckytheClown]

As the title suggests, I'm hunting Stormbirds and their cannons aren't dropping "properly". I say this because I caught it come off, but it hit the back of the wing and I guessed it got damaged during the fall and broke. Or it simply got launched. I tried to take it off on ground level and it just straight disappeared. Anyone else have this issue? I know that I got them to drop before, because I got 2 from mission related Stormbirds.

[Carnasid]

Stormbirds have a bad habit of yeeting broken parts into the ionosphere. I watched one just scoop up several fallen thrusters during a wing flap and launch them into the sky. No idea if they ever came back down.

[Astronimo]

Blast their storm cannon when they are flying, so it drops on the groud. Then pick it up, don't leave it till the end of the fight.
And, preferably, fight on the normal ground, not in the mountains. Stormbird's parts have a habit to fly in any possible direction.

[Cymelion]

I believe there is a setting that keeps key items on the corpses in the accessibility settings area. I got tired of farming and switched it on personally just so I can finish the game faster.

[GlowWorm]

As Cymelion says, there is an Easy Loot setting - IIRC if you set the Difficulty to Custom, the Easy Loot option will appear. With Easy Loot, items such as Stormbird Cannons which are still attached are not destroyed when the machine is.

(What I typically do is to keep my farming / grinding activities separate from any quest gameplay, and for farming / grinding I simply set the Difficulty to Story. I have done plenty of non-Story farming / grinding in this game, so I am satisfied that I have adequately experienced that experience, and now I personally choose to make it super easy.)

(Note that if you thought you wanted to play in Ultra Hard mode, Ultra Hard is locked and you can't make any change to set Easy Loot.)