Is there a way to speed up animations (during combat?)

[DennisBergkamp]

Yes, you can speed up lava golem animations, except they are contained in a different location (along with the new viking unit animations + the new rage talents), they can be found in:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\King's Bounty - Warriors of the North\sessions\addon\ses.kfs

Just place the updated .atom files in that folder (no need to create a Mods directory).

HOWEVER, I think the lava golem slowing things down to a crawl has nothing to do with animations, it seems to be more of a graphics/performance issue... maybe turning down graphics options (lighting, shadows perhaps?) would help with that.