There are somewhere around 14 or 15 different starter weapons and/or other choices you can buy from the weapons/upgrade-quest vendor Antonio Stacklund. The pieces you need to upgrade your weapon drop from early lower level mobs for some items and for others you need to be able to kill much higher mobs. Leets for example drop the spine to upgrade the 1he sword ... leets are level 15 or so, while robots for the pistol upgrade are level 4 or 5.

Is there any chance that for the higher level mobs that drop weapon upgrade parts, that there are a few "smaller" ones so that any profession can have a chance to get their upgrade parts before they are big enough to solo a level 15ish mob? Teaming is a good activity, but having an upgraded weapon shouldn't depend on it.

Parts that drop from the Leets or the Minibulls I believe are the primary ones that could use a few smaller versions of themselves. IIRC Reets, Garbage Fleas, and Rollerrats are already of varying sizes.

Emma