Although it’s fine to stay within each of the patterns for your licks, connecting one pattern to another will give you more range from high to low. The following figure shows a useful way of connecting the pentatonic patterns across your neck.
In the above guitar neck, there are symbols that signify the various patterns of E minor pentatonic scale. The “solid dots” represent Pattern 4 (notice there are two different octaves of it). The “x’es” represent an option of connecting Pattern 4 to Pattern 5 as demonstrated in Figure 2. In the guitar nech shown as Figure 1, the “open dots” represent how to connect Patterns 4, 5, 1, and 2, giving you a three-octave range. This is demonstrated in Figure 3.