LE, I haven't created a new toon in some time, but today I am finding that while I am artistically painting myself the perfect Sarnak, I am continually getting booted from the LS (Lost Connection!) and have to start over. Is the LS going up and down right now, or is this a side effect of the timeout?
If the latter, is it possible to not count the minutes during character creation?

I have set the timeout at 10 minutes now. That should give you plenty of time to make your character
However, be aware that the client sometimes randomly feels like it should disconnect itself for lack of activity, even though the server was sending information to it just seconds before. Such disconnects should be rare and only happen after 60-75 seconds though.