I think the current load on the blockchain also affects it
It doesn't. Transactions in mempool have nothing to do with this.
you can download a torrent of the blockchain and download it that way and then place it in the folder. Just make sure to download a legit torrent of the blockchain.
You can't be sure it's legit, the safe way is to let Bitcoin Core download everything.
What are your computer specs like? The only thing you could do is to buy a faster computer. Im not sure what is more important, if CPU, HDD or RAM, but it should be way faster with a faster computer, assuming that your internet connection is good, and that your connectivity to other nodes is good.
From my own experience: adding more RAM made a huge improvement. An SSD will be faster than HDD, but at my current setup with HDD, I get about 1 block per second.
I've read much worse results too though, I'm not sure if Windows vs Linux makes much difference, and I can't test it by myself on Windows.
My advice:
-if your computer is low on memory: add more RAM. I consider anything under 8 GB low nowadays, and adding memory will also increase the overall performance of your PC.
-if you don't have one yet: install an SSD. Even if you don't use it for Bitcoin Core, your entire computer will work much faster (you'll need to install your software on it of course).
only advancing a few hundred blocks per day.
On average, 144 new blocks are found each day. At this speed iIt will take you a very long time to catch up.