Two different problems share this wording. If you have not reached Windrest Camp yet, the Team menu is locked by design and finishing the tutorial opens it. If you have reached camp — and especially if you have already extracted once — and the Team or camp menu is still locked, that is a reported bug with no published fix; a developer directed affected players to open a Discord ticket rather than offering a workaround.
Where this is being asked · By two groups who need opposite answers, which is why the usual one-line reply fails half of them. The phrasing does not distinguish them, so this page leads by asking which one you are.
Evidence
The answer, broken into claims
A grade describes sourcing, not truth. Inferred means we concluded it and the reasoning is shown; unverified means someone asserted it and nobody stands behind it.
OfficialA Bellring developer acknowledged the camp menu staying locked and referred it to their tech team without publishing a fix.
mistveil14 [developer], Steam Discussions, 30 July 2026.
CorroboratedThe Team menu is gated behind finishing the tutorial and reaching Windrest Camp.
UnverifiedThat reinstalling clears the post-tutorial lock.
Circulated as advice, demonstrated by nobody. The one report that resolved did so without a reinstall and without a known cause.
§01
First: have you reached Windrest Camp?
The Team menu is gated behind the tutorial. Until you finish it and arrive at Windrest Camp, party and friend features are not available, and nothing is wrong. This accounts for most people typing this phrase, and if it is you, the fix is simply to keep playing — the menu opens on arrival.
The gate is the tutorial, not a level, a purchase or a setting.
A second thing that blocks parties even after the gate opens: client version mismatch. A full-release client cannot party with an outdated one, so both of you updating is worth ruling out before assuming a bug.
Region is a separate wall again — it is assigned from your account and cannot be changed, which stops some parties forming for reasons that have nothing to do with this menu.
§02
If you have, this is the bug — and there is no published fix
Players have reported the camp and team menus staying locked after completing the tutorial and extracting successfully, surviving multiple restarts. On 30 July a Bellring account tagged mistveil14 [developer] replied to one such report: “This camp menu lock issue requires further investigation by our tech team. Please open a ticket on our official Discord and we’ll assist you one-on-one.” That is the entire official record. No patch note since has named it, and no workaround has been published by anyone.
The developer reply is an escalation, not a fix. Opening a Discord ticket is the published route.
The player who filed that report said a day later that it “resolved itself eventually” with no known cause, which is worth knowing and is not a solution you can follow.
Nothing in the 6 or 7 August updates mentions it. If you are affected, check the known-issues page rather than this one for the current state — it tracks each patch.
§03
What not to do
The advice circulating for this is mostly guesswork applied to the wrong half of the problem, and some of it costs real time. Reinstalling is the common suggestion and there is no evidence it does anything for the post-tutorial case — the one report that resolved did so without a reinstall.
Do not reinstall on the strength of a forum guess. Nobody has demonstrated it helps.
Do not assume it is region lock. That produces a different symptom — parties failing to form, not a locked menu.
Do file the ticket. It is the only route the developers have actually published, and a report with your account details is what their tech team asked for.
Expiry condition
What would have to change for this answer to be wrong
An answer about a live-service game without this is an answer with a hidden expiry date.
Bellring names the camp-menu lock in a patch note, or publishes a workaround. Either would collapse this page back into a single answer, because the post-tutorial half is only interesting while nobody has fixed it.
Citations
Every source, with its date
A complaint posted before 30 July 2026 describes the playtest, not the game you bought. Those are flagged rather than quietly mixed in.
Official, and the whole official record on the post-tutorial case: the account tagged mistveil14 [developer] calls it an issue needing “further investigation by our tech team” and directs affected players to a Discord ticket. It is an escalation rather than a fix, which is why this page does not print one.
Press — that the Team feature is gated behind finishing the tutorial and reaching the main base, and that a client version mismatch separately blocks parties. This is the ordinary case, and the one every other page answers.
Related questions
Finish the tutorial and reach Windrest Camp. Party and friend features are gated behind that and open on arrival. If yours is still locked after reaching camp, you are hitting a reported bug rather than the gate.
