The drop rate thing was because I was being overly blunt with how I was checking for empty item drop/steal slots. I put in an additional check to deal with cases where there's a non-zero drop rate that still registers as 0, so those cases should now be properly marked.
As for the other thing, I forgot about it if you sent them to Elte they should be wandering around in one of the grassy areas visible from the main road, at least once you grab the updated version. The NWTC Heavy now also doesn't disappear once the endgame starts up.