Ways to break essentia out of feats?

[Particle_Man]

I know that Midnight Metamagic frees it’s locked essentia back to the essentia pool after the relevant spells are cast.

Other than that it seems like once the essentia is put into a incarnum feat, it is locked in for 24 hours.

What are the ways (if any) to get the essentia back out of those feats and either immediately or eventually into the essentia pool?

[TiaC]

Embrace the Dark Chaos to remove the feat should do it.

[Darg]

You can either use essentia damage or steal the essentia. The prior requires healing afterward and the latter you just have to wait for the temporary essentia to return to the pool.

[Doctor Despair]

There's a barbarian-like class (Totem Rager?) that removes essentia from the feat when the rage ends. Doesn't really refund it because the essentia is gone, but it does come out of the feats.

[Rebel7284]

Why are you trying to do this? Background might help offer better suggestions or workarounds.

[Troacctid]

Just don't invest essentia into the feat in the first place if you don't want it to be invested.

[Particle_Man]

I am looking for ways to bring more flexibility to essentia choices. So if I put the essentia into feat A but see that situations requiring A are not going to come up that day after all, then it would be nice to get the essentia out to use for something else.

I suppose there are also cases where the feat would be used up, like the healing one or possibly the smite one, in which case there would be another reason to free up that essentia for something else.

Maybe even into a different feat.

So giving an ally an item that lets them temporarily steal essentia from you might work? Although if essentia is stolen (say via glove of incarnum theft) does the target get to say from where it comes (this feat or that feat, for example) or is it randomly determined?

[Darg]

Essentia loss or damage is done to your essentia pool first and then from a random receptacle. So if you have 1 free essentia in your pool and 4 invested between a feat (1) and 2 soulmelds (2 and 1) and take 3 essentia damage you remove the one from your pool and roll a d3 to determine which receptacle to pull from. If you roll the soulmeld with 2 you stop there. If you roll the feat with 1 invested, flip a coin to determine between the soulmelds for the last 1 lost essentia.