Source basis: this guide is built from the two Steam Community walkthroughs for the first Deponia (Mutt's “Game 1” guide and mishalunchbox's 5-star “walkthrough with missable achievements”), cross-checked against each other, plus the Steam store for official details and an embedded full-game video. Deponia is a long point-and-click adventure with fixed, hand-designed puzzles, so this is a chapter-by-chapter guide — the goal of each chapter, the verified puzzle answers, the missable achievements and the spots that trip people up — rather than a click-by-click dump. For the exact moment-to-moment solving, the 100%-achievements video below walks the whole game. The ending is clearly spoiler-flagged. Nothing here is invented.
What is Deponia?
Deponia (also called “Welcome to Deponia”) is the first game in Daedalic Entertainment's cult Deponia series, released on August 6, 2012 and followed by Chaos on Deponia, Goodbye Deponia and Deponia Doomsday. It's a classic hand-painted point-and-click adventure with razor slapstick humor, costs around $9.99 on its own (and is also bundled in The Complete Journey), and a single playthrough runs roughly six to nine hours.
You play Rufus, a self-absorbed but oddly endearing dreamer stuck on the trash planet Deponia, obsessed with escaping up to the floating paradise city of Elysium. When an Elysian woman named Goal crash-lands in his village of Kuvaq — knocked out cold — Rufus spots his ticket up: revive her, and ride to Elysium on the coat-tails of her fiancé Cletus, who happens to look exactly like him. Naturally, almost nothing goes to plan.
How to play (quick tips)
- Highlight the hotspots. Hold the spacebar (or the mouse scroll-wheel button) to mark every interactable object on screen — the single biggest time-saver, and it kills the pixel-hunting.
- Double-click path arrows. Kuvaq's village center is huge and you cross it constantly; double-clicking any exit arrow pops Rufus straight there instead of making him walk.
- Talk to everyone about everything, and examine everything. Clues and new Plan steps hide at the bottom of dialogue trees, and right-clicking objects (and items in your inventory) often drops a hint. The lowest dialogue option usually ends a chat — and a few chats don't repeat, so ask the important things first.
- Consult Rufus's Plan. The light-bulb icon opens his Plan; mouse over any un-checked drawing for the game's best built-in hints.
- Think cartoon logic. The puzzles are comedic on purpose — when stuck, combine the two most ridiculous items in your inventory. And note that some actions only work on the second or third click, so retry before assuming you're wrong.
Full walkthrough video
Chapter-by-chapter guide
Deponia is split into three chapters. Below is each chapter's goal, the standout puzzles with their verified answers, and the spots people most often get stuck on. Spoiler-light until the clearly marked ending section.
Chapter I: Kuvaq
The long opening chapter. It starts small — pack a suitcase and escape Toni's house — then opens into the whole village, where you tackle two big linked quests: brewing a stimulant to wake Goal (the “Espresso Quest”) and rigging the post office to radio Cletus (the “Radio Quest”).
- Escape Toni's house. Wash three coloured socks together in the pot into one usable Pair of Socks (yellow + blue + green, boiled with detergent), catch the runaway toothbrush with a baited mouse-trap, gather the rest of your packing list, then convert the escape pod: pull the battery, stash the suitcase, and bolt the Mailbox on as a new seat.
- The Escape Pod harpoon — achievement Bullseye. You must aim the harpoon via a panel where the crosshairs move like a chess knight (one straight, one diagonal), landing on the flashing orange-striped track. Don't skip this minigame or you lose the achievement. Reading the lever pad as “look-direction / which-fork,” one clean route is: North/Right → West/Down → West/Down → North/Right → West/Down → South/Right → North/Right → West/Down → North/Right.
The Espresso Quest (wake Goal). Goal won't wake without the strongest coffee on Deponia, and Lonzo's recipe needs three special waters and three special powders:
- Clear water = Booze from the Mayor's office. Open the globe for the Glass, then use the Divining Rod on the desk's water emblem to pop the drawer with the booze-cabinet key.
- Exhilarating water = bull taurine. Turn the mechanical Bull around with the cow Sign (from the bar), enrage it with the Red Curtain on the bulletin board, then draw its “blood” with the Syringe.
- Energized water = battery acid. Win the Key of Truck from Hannek, open the hood, drill the battery, and catch the acid in the Glass.
- Powders: Stimulant (Doctor's Cabinet), a Chili Pepper (grab it with the Asbestos Gloves), and Black Powder (cut open the Dud with the scalpel). Grind all three in Toni's shop grinder into Coffee Powder.
Combine the waters in the Glass, load powder + water into Lonzo's espresso machine for the Espresso, then in the Assembly Hall lock Gizmo in the closet (Hand Torch on the cardboard box), frame the Mayor with the stolen stethoscope to clear the room, and funnel the Espresso into Goal.
Two sub-puzzles people get stuck on here:
- Detonation Plan magnets — achievement Demolition Expert (correct on the first try). In the Alley map view, place magnets on the two highest spots (the towers above the entrance) and the rightmost spot on the bottom row, then ring the blast bell. This blows up the homes of the three weird-hatted men blocking the line at Town Hall — their hats match those roofs.
- Hannek's truck quiz. Clean the windshield with the Wet Sponge to read the owner's name, then tell Hannek: name = Sugarpuff, favorite color = pink, hobby = ballet.
The Radio Quest (contact Cletus & escape). This is the chapter's most notorious stretch — the chatty Postbot deliberately feeds you misleading information. Two anchor puzzles:
- The Vault safe code = 3649. Hold the Note over the grid of numbered post boxes so a 3-digit set shows through each hole; the small number beside each hole tells you which digit to read, following the arrows from the top.
- The pigeon / Planet's Magnetic Field puzzle — achievement That seems about right… (don't skip). Rotate the discs to redistribute the “signal-bar” lights so the big bubble-wrap box is dispatched through the small pigeon hole, crashing it and dumping the bubble wrap (the big pigeon sits under the strongest 3-bar field). To set up the bubble wrap first, drug the postage cats so the white stamp-licker runs fast (Espresso) and the orange wheel-cat runs slow (Tranquilizer). The exact reverse of that — orange fast, white slow — earns the separate Missing Postage achievement, so grab that before you proceed.
From there you free a parrot to jam the emergency line, wear down the operator for his Headphones, radio Cletus, and finally escape Kuvaq with Goal — the point of no return for the Junkyard King pieces in this chapter (see below).
Chapter II: Junk Mines
Rufus and the unconscious Goal land in the Junk Mines, home to Doc. The work here is mechanical: get the mine-bike running, light up a dark stretch of track, and navigate a lever maze.
- Assemble the Power Inverters — achievement DIY'er (don't skip). Build three inverters from the junk heap (talk to Doc — including about “women” — to unlock the in-game hints):
- Avial = Conical Corpus + Cobalt Muff + Clamp Bushing + 2-spoke Bevel
- Dorsal = Spherical Corpus + Emerald Muff + Screw Bushing + 4-spoke Bevel
- Bi-Nausal = Edged Corpus + Mauve Muff + Push-On Bushing + 3-spoke Bevel
- Illuminate the Outer Turn. Swap the dim red bulb for your Halogen Lamp, clean the Mirror with a booze-soaked cloth, hang it on the skeleton, and use a Power Inverter on the maintenance box to flip the arm so the light reflects round the corner. (Plugging an inverter into the Crane's maintenance box later, instead of the working fuse, earns Newton would be proud.)
- The meditation word = “PUPUP”. Doc teaches a letters-in-the-sky meditation. In the Crane, put the skeleton's Leg on the seat (leg behind your head), right-click the horizon, choose PUPUP, and Rufus drinks from the Filled Bottle — which lets you grab the crane controls and load Goal onto the bike.
- The mine-bike maze — achievement Master of Switches (don't skip). A clean working solution: Yellow & Green levers forward, Red lever pushed back, and the bottom-right switch set to RED (the bottom-left switch can be any colour). There are actually four valid combinations — the constants are yellow forward, exactly one lever back, and the bottom-right switch red.
Chapter III: Ascension Station
The shortest chapter, but a missable-achievement minefield. Rufus reaches the station that climbs toward Elysium and has to bluff his way past the bailiff Argus.
- Fix the candy machine, then light and repair the mosaics. Plug in the cotton-candy machine, mop the dirty mosaic clean, make Glowing Phosphor Cotton Candy (light a phosphor candy at any lamp) to illuminate each mosaic niche, and repair the cracked one with a gum-stuck stone — which forces it to break, exposing the fuse box. Press the fuse switch to reset the elevator code.
- Disguise as Cletus. Build an “Improvised Cletus Costume” — greasy mop wig (dipped in the oil tank), the flag-and-lampshade cape and stiff collar — then sneak past Argus.
- The Platypus Soft Toy stealth bit. The light over the fence exit is synced to the squeaky toy. Break the sync: pick the toy up (Rufus moves to the left), cross to the right, put the toy back on the board, then cross left while squeaking it — Rufus slips into the exit.
Chapter III achievements to grab on the way: Gourmet (eat every Candy Shop food, including all three cotton-candy flavours), History of Deponia (illuminate and examine all three mosaics), Paradox (throw a still-needed item into the glowing Pool — a future Rufus comes back to stop you), Lever Lover (keep clicking the useless candy-shop switches), and Loving the Truth (in the final boat conversation, pick only the 2nd dialogue option every time).
Junkyard King — the collectible achievement
Scattered across the scenery are 11 small junk items — five in Kuvaq, two in the Junk Mines, four in the Ascension Station — that build a sculpture on the Bonus → Sculpture menu. Two things make this one tricky:
- The pieces don't enter your inventory (clicking just plays a chime), and they are not revealed by the hotspot-highlight key — you have to spot them in the art.
- They must be gathered in one continuous playthrough. Miss one and you can't simply reload to click it; you'd have to replay everything after that point. So sweep each area carefully before a chapter's point-of-no-return (the guides flag each “last chance” — in Chapter I it's when you escape with Goal, in Chapter II when you re-enter the Control Center, in Chapter III before the Wrecked Cable Boat).
The ending — explained (spoilers)
Spoiler warning: the next paragraph covers how the first Deponia ends. Skip it if you haven't finished.
Game one ends on a deliberate cliffhanger, not a clean victory. Rufus's whole scheme — impersonate Cletus, hand over Goal's memory cartridge, and ride the station up to Elysium in his double's place — comes apart at the last moment, and the story breaks off mid-rescue rather than resolving. There's no “good/bad ending” choice to make; this is the single canonical lead-in to the sequel, Chaos on Deponia. If you're playing The Complete Journey, the credits roll straight into game two's tutorial — complete that without skipping for the Huzzah — once more from the top achievement.
Frequently asked questions
How long is Deponia?
About six to nine hours for a single playthrough, depending on how long the puzzles hold you up and how much of the (very funny) dialogue you take in.
Which achievements are missable, and do I have to replay?
Quite a few. The “don't skip the minigame” ones are Bullseye (harpoon), DIY'er (inverters), Master of Switches (mine-bike maze) and That seems about right… (pigeons). Others need a specific action at a specific time — Demolition Expert (magnets right on the first try), Missing Postage, Newton would be proud, Paradox, Gourmet, History of Deponia, Lever Lover and Loving the Truth — plus the cross-chapter Junkyard King. Save often and grab them in the moment to avoid a full replay.
What's the post office Vault code?
3649. You derive it by lining the Note up over the numbered post boxes so one three-digit set shows through each hole, then reading the digit each hole points to in arrow order.
How do I get into the wrecked truck for the energized water?
Hannek will hand over the Key of Truck if you convince him you're the owner. Clean the windshield with the Wet Sponge to read the name, then answer: name Sugarpuff, color pink, hobby ballet. Open the hood, drill the battery, and catch the acid in the Glass.
What are the three Power Inverters made of?
Avial = Conical Corpus + Cobalt Muff + Clamp Bushing + 2-spoke Bevel; Dorsal = Spherical Corpus + Emerald Muff + Screw Bushing + 4-spoke Bevel; Bi-Nausal = Edged Corpus + Mauve Muff + Push-On Bushing + 3-spoke Bevel.
What's the meditation answer in the Junk Mines?
PUPUP. Put the skeleton's leg on the crane seat, examine the horizon, pick PUPUP from the menu, and Rufus drinks from the Filled Bottle automatically.
Do I need to play the other Deponia games?
No — the first game stands on its own (and ends on a cliffhanger that leads into Chaos on Deponia). But it's the opening act of a four-game saga, so Rufus and Goal's story pays off far more if you continue with Chaos on Deponia, Goodbye Deponia and the time-travel finale Deponia Doomsday.
Want a second full run to follow along with? Here's another complete Deponia walkthrough on YouTube. You can find the game on its official Steam page.