how do you make enough influence to get to crystal? whats the fastest way to earn influence?
Clear the town of enemies, do all the quests you get from rumors, and do the daily bounty and you'll have enough by about day 4-8 depending on what background you picked. Skip the 3 blackguards in Marston Avenue and the group of space marines in Kasey's park. They're too strong initially, but you can clear everything else. Personally, I also skip the guild quest encounter at the docks until after I get access to Crystal Hills.
If you plan on doing the arena or clearing the Stokke's Hills bandits on a regular basis I would also recommend picking up 1 or 2 top tier mercs. I find that the low tier mercs just don't have the firepower to deal with the regular random arena fights or the Stokke's Hills bandits unless they're all wearing duraplate and Bud is trained up enough to be reliable with a coil or plasma gun which is not possible to do quickly.
Personally, I prefer Ayden as my first pick because he does enough damage that I can get by with only 1 top tier for quite awhile. When I take anyone else I end up needing 2. So even though Ayden is the most expensive merc, he ends up saving me money because I don't need a 2nd top tier for about a month.
You can do the easy random arena fights with low tier mercs no problem if you want to focus on something other than combat. I find that if I try to do Stokke's Hills or the regular arena without any top tiers it's just an exercise in frustration. I either have to save scum to avoid having my people constantly taken down or I have to just not do the Stokkes Hills bandits or the regular arena fights. Technically you can't die in this game so if you don't care that your mercs (or your main) get taken out on a regular basis in combat it's not a big deal but I play as if death was permanent so it bugs me if anyone EVER goes down.