I received the board expansions for Arkham for Christmas which I had not previously had and some friends and I have been familiarizing ourselves with them.

I wanted to check with the boards and see how you treat the expansion items at your tables.

So far we have not been using GOO's or Investigators from one board expansion with another. This does not seem to limiting though, and as host I'm thinking now that the new investigators & GOO's have been "showcased" in a few games we should just start pulling from a common pot of all investigators and all GOO's regardless of which boards are in play.

I have also been segregating all spells, common items and unique items and only shuffling them in when their relevant sets are in play. I believe this is correct.

Lastly, we have been using relationships in all games and using personal stories in most games. It seems that the personal stories tend to be distractions from the primary goals, I notice that personal stories games run a bit longer and the doom track trends higher. I didn't know if there had been a preference of leaving those items out or keeping them in.

No guardians used yet, however we have endured defeat at the hands of Hastur and the KiY herald twice now. Need to gear up for some payback there this weekend.

The general rule of thumb is:

• Components from large-box expansions are okay for use in every game. Mythos cards should only be used if the board is in play. Same with gate cards (except for Innsmouth's). Some monsters are thematically tied with their expansion, but there is no harm in mixing them straight up.
• Components from small-box expansions besides Lurker are thematically tied. Only use them when using the associated small-box expansion.

I'll reply with the same thing I said in the similar thread going on:

Of all the expansion elements that are "perma-mixed," the investigator cards (except maybe not allies) are the second-most common. Maybe a close third is the Injury and Madness cards. The most common perma-mixed stuff would probably be the Investigators, themselves, and/or GOOs. Most of the investigator cards don't seem out of place, theme-wise, so they won't take away from the overall play (I say "most" because there's always cards like "Milk of Shub Niggurath" and certain spells) if you play with mixed expansions in this way only. I also leave OW Encounters in, too, as well as Arkham encounters. I don't own too many expansions yet, so it's not a problem, but, of course, if I'm not playing with a certain board, I ignore the boards' Mythos cards.

(for the record, I have Dark Pharaoh, King in Yellow, Dunwich, and just got Innsmouth).

i have Dunwhich, Kingsport, Black Goat, and Dark Pharaoh and leave everything mixed in except i disreguard the mythos cards for the boards im not using when they come up...imo there's no need to take out the cards every game when you can just keep drawing to get to a regular card