You only need lockout on 1 to get through, or campfire, or port past if you've been in those zones before
you need one win to continue progress so you can get access to quests but you can campfire or banner into most TBL zones
you need to have one on lock, that mean you need to do a trial every 2,5 days to keep one on lock to be able to go to the next zone,,,,so dumb , good that I can kill one ( trial of three ). for you if you don't box and be able to kill one you need to beg another one, who can, every 2.5 days.
yes, get trial zone and have some one who is full flagged open the doors for you. But if you must have Progression done at least one Smoke Trial in order to talk to NPC's for quests.