How does Energy Conduit work?

Energy Conduit is a piece of Gear with an activated ability that allows you to add Energy to your Rune Pool. Here is how it works:

Ability Breakdown

• Cost: You must exhaust Energy Conduit to activate its ability.
• Effect: When the ability resolves, you Add 1 Energy to your Rune Pool.
• Reaction Tag: Because the ability has the [Reaction] tag, you can activate it during the process of playing a spell or ability to help pay for its costs (Rule 416.3).

Important Rules

• Adding Resources: According to Rule 416.2, spells and abilities that "Add" resources (like Energy Conduit) finalize immediately. Priority and Focus do not pass, and these abilities resolve before any other outstanding items on the chain.
• Reaction Limitation: While the ability itself is a Reaction, the card text explicitly states: "Abilities that add resources can't be reacted to." This means that once you activate Energy Conduit to add Energy, your opponent cannot use a card or ability to stop that specific resource gain from happening.
• Rune Pool: Once added, the Energy goes into your Rune Pool and can be spent to pay for cards or other abilities for the remainder of the turn (Rule 162.1).
• End of Turn: Like all resources in your Rune Pool, any Energy gained from Energy Conduit that remains unspent will be lost at the end of the turn (Rule 317.3.b).

If you are using Energy Conduit to help pay for a card, you would initiate the process of playing that card, and during the "Pay Costs" step, you would exhaust the Conduit to add the Energy to your pool to cover the cost.