has announced that its next free update, Return to Beast's Castle, will be dropping on October 1. As the title suggests, it will whisk us back to the Beauty and the Beast realm, and plans to add a few fan favourite characters for us to invite to the valley.

As it stands, you can only unlock Belle and the Beast in Disney Dreamlight Valley, alongside Gaston, if you have the Rift in Time expansion, but now Cogsworth and Lumiere will be joining us in this update. The footstool is also already available as a companion, and frankly, I'd love to see another piece of sentient furniture joining us in the next Star Path to coincide with this update.

What we know about the [[link]] update outside of assuming the characters is incredibly scarce, though. No details of what sort of quests to expect have been [[link]] shared, so much like the last few free updates, and , I imagine we will have to expect the unexpected. There's been a particular emphasis on puzzle-solving in the recent Inside Out and Peter Pan update, so [[link]] hopefully, there will be some sort of bookshelf puzzle or something similar to unlock these companions.

If you don't already have access to the Beauty and the Beast realm in the Dream Castle, you'll definitely want to work towards unlocking it as soon as possible. It costs 12'500 Dreamlight, which is quite the investment, given we've only just unlocked the Inside Out realm. Since this update is a return to the realm, you'll also want to make your way through the process of unlocking Belle and the Beast, too.

After all, you won't want any roadblocks to stop you from welcoming the new villagers. I faced this struggle when Timon and Pumbaa were added to the valley, having not unlocked Simba and Nala in advance, and now I've vowed to never put myself through that stress again.