Thank you, glad to hear you're enjoying the game. Aside from scripted story moments, the designated place to talk with your companions is the camp for now. In the future there will be an additional option.

The warning that you need a safer spot to camp pops up only if an enemy unit is nearby. They might be hidden by the fog of war, but they are definitely there.

Interact after combat is for manually looting fallen enemies and resource nodes. You can switch to your companions after combat, and they can do the harvesting or looting instead. If you could talk to them inside the post-combat exploration, they'd need to had something to say that make sense in context. That would complicate things a lot without adding enough in return. Instead if there is any related conversation, it just triggers after you end the encounter.

You can trade items freely between your party members in the inventory, unless a companion is temporary (therefore locked) for story reasons. Just drag whatever you want to give onto your companion's portrait. Both in & out of combat. But you can't change gear in the combat state.

Unless you meant something else here and I misunderstood?

Thanks for the quick response, Raven. Just checked again and i can't exchange items while in battle map, even after combat. Tried to exchange some tools, food etc. Didn't work. Do i have to be adjacent to the party member i want to trade with? Didn't pay attention to that point.

Ah ok, then everything works as intended. Feedback is showing up.