Values of the packs are not custom increase. The probability for the higher rarity packs are up to 2x more likely to appear.
Additionally the labor requirement for sunkens is 1/5th its live counterpart. So they are already extremely buffed.
When i asked about this in the ticket system, i got linked the following:
Dear ArcheRagers! Please take a minute to check changes and updates we prepared for you. To apply them, server is going to be restarted on 8/4 at 7 am. Duration time - 40 minutes. List of updates: Chinese characters are now displayed in the game chat in English and French localization. Daru...
na.archerage.to
the relevant text for me being:
Drop and price changes to the packs from Sunken Ships brought with 4.7 but previously not mentioned in the updates:
Ancient Cargo Pack (basic) – drop chance reduced and price increased x2.
Luxury Porcelain Cargo Pack (grand) – drop chance increased x2; price increased x1.5.
Rare Wine Cargo Pack (rare) – drop chance increased x3.
At some point the game did increase the price, for the basic packs that was from 10g to the current 16g83, that's not x2 so to me it seems like that isn't the increase mentioned. At least this is where my confusion came from that the packs would be worth more, which is why i tried sunkens in the first place.
But to respond to your post:
Maybe having it higher labor but also higher profit would make it more useful (I'm not trying to get some magic moneymaking cheese, i am just saying it is out of proportion to the other moneymaking things ingame at the moment, since raising the price of something raises your gold/time and your gold/labor). To expand on my previous example, the trade run i was using for my example takes about 4 minutes, where sunkens take longer then that even if you find a ship right next to a turn in point(which is really only possible after having sailed 10 minutes in the first place), which is rare, most of the time you will spend 15-20 min to sail around, raise a ship, then sail the ship to a delivery point. As well as the risk, since someone pirating would then be able to turn in it for 0 labor and get 100% of the price.
All of this to get around the same profit. so as a crude average, you get 1/4 of the money/time.
I get that in it's current state it's pretty good money/labor, but you cannot ignore the time/risk coefficient in this. Not to mention that the labor cost for raising the ship is still the same.
Until something changes i guess i will just forget about sunkens, at least in the current state, I will always pick trade packs with commerce over sunkens, more money in less time, with no risk, even at higher labor cost is always going to be better. I would love to hear if anyone actually doing sunkens disagrees on the profit level currently. (assuming anyone is actually doing them.)
Sorry for the long read , but in it's current state i feel like sunkens are just wasting my time compared to other things so I had to put some effort into it
. I don't know what the ideal solution is, but I hope you can agree that it is something that could be reconsidered.
TL
R Yes for gold/labor they are not bad, for money/time they don't even come close to other custom boosted options.