Karil's Crossbow/Fight Caves Question

I want to finish the Kajarma diaries and in order to do that I am going to have to kill at certain monster in the Fight Caves. I was thinking that the best way for me to do that would be to range and I was going to get Karil's crossbow to help me out with that. Now I know that I have to also have his armor set to do the special associated with him but I don't know if having the full armor set would have anything to do with how hard I hit the monsters in the caves. I guess my question is would I still do as much damage on the monsters there if I used full black dhide armor and the bow or would I have to get the full set of armor with the bow to hit the max damage?