I’m wanting to use addressables to be able to have some control over loading and unloading assets from memory. In my eyes this should be built into the engine, but hey at least it’s here 
Packing addressables for me turns a 5 minute build into a 30 minute build (build+build content). I’m assuming this is due to packing into addressables.
Since I’m not interested in having my data download and such, is it possible to not have to go through this pain?
Thank you
That depends on the type of asset, but generally Unity isn’t great at loading raw data. Unity imports assets during the editor, and during the build packs those things into loadable units.
Where is the content when doing this 5 minute build? In Resources? Or are you saying that building without content is 5 min, and building with is 30?
Addressables uses an incremental build approach, so if you make small changes, subsequent builds should be faster than the first. Especially if things aren’t just in one big bundle. Incremental build helps a little if you have one big bundle, an lot if you have many smaller ones.
I am struggling to figure this part out… when does addressables actually build into the asset bundles then? I have used the ui and clicked Build > Build Player Content, I have compiled a preliminary build of the whole game, but I can’t find the bundles anywhere, and neither can my game. any guidance on this?
Bundles are stored in Library/com.unity.addressables/StreamingAssetsCopy. They will be copied to the StreamingAssets folder temporarily during build time. Your game doesn’t have to find those by itself because the AAS will take care of that during runtime.