Maybe build your own iso that doesn’t include the things you won’t use?

Yes, but I don’t know how to do that. I might do some research on it tho.

I think you could mount the iso and manually delete the packages you dont want. Mounting an iso is as easy as

# mount -o loop /path/to/iso /path/to/mountpoint

You can also chroot into it while it is mounted: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Chroot

Disclaimer, I am not sure if deleting files inside the iso makes it weight less.

I might try this for the next install, thank you!

Just FYI, Arch Linux has a tool called Archiso that you can use to create live ISO image. You can copy the default releng config and edit the package list accordingly.