when I’m told to farm Ren unmasked does that mean continue to farm him until he is 7 star?
In general, you should assume that if someone gives you advice to farm a toon, they're giving you advice to farm that toon all the way to 7* ... UNLESS they specifically say otherwise by giving you another target, like,
Farm Hera to 5* then bring Ezra up to 5*. Keep alternating so you can use them to get Thrawn as soon as possible instead of getting Hera all the way to 7* but still not being able to unlock Thrawn
That's advice that people might give, but when they give it, they should be clear about it (and you should understand the reasons for it or ask a follow up question).
Now to get specific about KRU. KRU is tricky. Normally you're farming a particular toon, but in this case you're farming both the pilot and the ship at the same time. In this case I suggest setting your goals for the ship and letting KRU be whatever he is when the ship reaches the next goal.
And, yes, although it wasn't mentioned above because we weren't spelling out a specific plan for Cantina energy, having multiple competent pilots at Level 60 or 61 (it will take a couple days to use your GW Tokens to buy those Geo Ship blue prints after all) is a bigger advantage than having one 7* pilot. This wouldn't be true later where getting a pilot to 7* also means being able to take that pilot to g12 right away. But when you're level-limited, the difference between a g7 KRU at 5* and a g7 KRU at 7* isn't that big, so it's helpful to have competent allies at KRU's side. Unfortunately two of the three allies you want most right away are also farmed by the same Cantina energy.
For that reason, you don't want to spend so much time on KRU that you don't get your Geo Spy & Geo Soldier in shape. The really important thing is to get the ship, TIE Silencer, up to 5 stars by the time you hit level 77. But since you're starting early, that's going to be easy.
As I said above, when setting goals, given that KRU is on the same node as TIE Silencer, I would measure your progress more by TIE Silencer and just let KRU's shards be whatever they're going to be. Since the drop rate is the same but KRU drops 2 shards at a time while Silencer only drops one blueprint, you should always have between 1.75 and 2.25 times more KRU shards than you have TIE Silencer shards.
That means when you have 50 TIE-S blueprints, you should have a minimum of 88 KRU shards. Then when you have 80 TIE-S blueprints, you should have 140 KRU shards minimum.
This results in a general rule that KRU will have one more star than his ship, the TIE-Silencer.
When getting ready for level 60, I would bring TIE-Silencer up to 3-stars. Just don't worry about where KRU is. You'll be bringing TIE-S all the way to 7-stars eventually, so of course KRU is going to get there as well, but we will be bouncing back & forth a little to keep a balance so that GeoSpy & GeoSoldier aren't ignored.
3-star Silencer will mean 88 to 112 shards of KRU. Whatever it is doesn't matter, because that's all 4* territory.
When you have that, make sure your Spy is 4*, then make sure your Soldier is 4* so that they match KRU.
Then bring TIE-S to 4* (which will take KRU to 5* unless you're very, very unlucky - in which case you'll still be only a couple shards short. If this happens, you can spend an extra day of Cantina energy to bring KRU up to 5*, but really it shouldn't be necessary).
Then Spy to 5*
Then Soldier to 5*
etc.
Your most influential pilot early is going to be either Spy or KRU - both are good at that level. I prefer spy, and I would probably actually bring Spy up a star first, then have KRU & Soldier follow (rather than having KRU be the first pilot to get each next star), but that's a preference. There's no data that's going to tell you which way is better, so while I might have an opinion, you should do whatever makes you happier. If you want to lead with KRU/Silencer and have Spy follow, that's fine.
