I was considering placing this topic in the ideas section but since I take the issue to be an unintentional sideeffect it's more a bug I think.
The ancestor quests are now far more difficult than before do to the game seeing a massive new set of items known as gemstones. As it is now every third or so item demanded by the ancestors is some kind of a gemstone. As the odds of a player to obtain a particular type, size and cut of a gemstone for every third quest are..well impossible, it greatly increases the difficulty. Also since every so often the game will demand a gemstone for the prime and both of the secondary items at the same time - effectively forcing a player to abandon such quests - the odds of gaining more than 15-20 numen points are nearly none existent.
I'd suggest fixing this bug by either removing gemstones from the selection pull altogether, or at least bunching them up into groups like for example a tiny gemstone of any type and cut, making them less frequent to appear and making it at least somewhat possible to complete such a quest.