I have been asking in server chat and searching online for how to actually craft the Fine Fancy Reptile Skin and I'm at a loss now.  I know its produced by drying 10 Fancy Reptile Skins and requires a "Drying: beginner" knowledge.  I am currently Professional 2 for Processing & Drying specifically is at 410 mastery.  I already have the knowledge learned.  Techthon only offered me one quest that involved bringing him Wheat Field Lookout's Pickaxe (rewarded +1 inventory item) not the "Need Soft Hides!" quest the tooltip says will provide me with "related knowledge" and I'm assuming that's because I've already got the knowledge of the Fine Fancy Reptile Skin learned.  I need to craft these and don't know how in the world I do it.  Every time I try and "dry" it, it ends up saying I failed.  Can someone please tell me WTF I'm doing wrong?!?!?!

OK, assuming you have Drying: Beginner learned when you look at your knowledge menu under H -> Life Skills -> Certificates

then I have to ask if it's raining or snowing when you are trying this.  Because you can't use Drying when it rains, and snowing counts as rain.

It's a bit annoying during this season because of the in-game snow.

Processing > Drying > Dried Hide > with Soft Hide, Fine Fancy Reptile Skin, Fancy Reptile Skin, and Thick Fur all unlocked with others having all the ?'s by them. I understand about the not being able to dry while it is raining or snowing out (had to edit this to add that I have tried both inside my residence and out in the world to do this with the same results). You simply can't even click on the "Drying" tap of the Processing window if it is doing that (I ran into that earlier when it was snowing and put 2 & 2 together as they say). I can click on it, put the Fancy Reptile Skin in the window, it start trying to "dry", but it ALWAYS ends up saying "Processing not going as planned" several times, "It is not working at all", and then finally "This isn't going to work at all" after about 3 minutes of trying to put something together. This is with Professional 3 49.84% for processing, drying being 280, and no buffs on at all. When I slap all of my gear, food, elixirs, pet buffs, and have everything "on" I'm sitting at over 550 mastery. Open my inventory, click on "process", click on "drying", click on the Fancy Reptile Skin, and that's the process I'm doing it just like all the other times I've processed stuff.  Below is a screenshot of my Knowledge window showing both that it is in there and that there are no "certificate" sections to look under. It just makes absolutely no sense what is going wrong. I've even tried only having the 10 Fancy Reptile Skins in my inventory when I've tried combinin them and even THAT didn't work.  Its not that I'm doing anything different than what it says I should be doing.  It just isn't doing what its supposed to be doing.

If you have been unable to get the relevant quest from Techthon I suggest you make sure that you have all quests active in the quest log window. You will still get the quest even if you have the knowledge as you may have gotten the fine fancy reptile skin as a proc while making the fancy reptile skin thereby giving you the knowledge. You also need to be apprentice 4 gathering to qualify for the quest. I am pretty sure you would have reached that level.

I am sure you already know how to set the quest types in the quest log window  but just in case you don't, you have to hit O and at the bottom of the window make sure all the icons are yellow. Once that is done go and talk to Techthon again.