I did it online. When it failed right at the end, I ended up with a completely bricked machine. I then downloaded Ventura to USB key (Apple make this extremely difficult to do). Reinstalled fresh with that key, and it failed at the same point. Tried to download Monterey to another key to restore the machine, and Apple refused to allow me to download Monterey, so I had to find an older computer to access Monterey installer. When finally on USB key, the Macbook refused to allow installation (literally the OS it came with) unless I wiped the entire computer including 2nd partition. After a load of hassle and manual restoration I got back to Monterey and have no intention to try Ventura again.
I have such regrets of buying into the Apple Silicon machines, just about everything about them is inferior to the Intel machines apart from mobile battery life. In particular, what had been a run of flawless RME performance for years became a lottery. If you look at reports on Digilloyd/Macperformanceguide website, it's clear that both USB chip and Thunderbolt chip performance has suffered on the Apple Silicon machines where the latency and throughput is inferior to the Intel Mac Pro.
I'm going to retry the 1.02 Thunderbolt Driverkit reinstallation to see if repeated install will fix any issues I have seen. I would prefer to be on Thunderbolt than USB (RME's USB drivers are great, it's just that I have so many other things running on USB I'd rather Audio was not sharing it) but so far I've seen lower functional latency on RME USB driver on the M1 Macs than Thunderbolt.