Hello! New player here (less than 60 hours as of writing). Here's what I can encountered as someone who has often dabbled into PvE content, so I can rank them from easiest to hardest of what I encountered. Some PvE options might missing here, like Homefront Ops or Abyssals, which meant that I haven't encountered them yet.
1) High Sec Mining
Most likely, a new player's first encounter to PvE outside career agents are during mining. Even in high sec asteroid belts, common NPC frigates sometimes appear to disturb a new Venture from mining. It was a bit panicky at first, but the most important thing here is to teach new players how to use drones. I had to learn them from the Rookie Help channel (incredibly helpful community btw) but a simple drone tutorial would be helpful in solving most PvE content involving non-combatant ships.
2) Career Agents
Personally, career agents are the best way to practice PvE content. It felt a bit tedious at times, but overall I managed to finish it especially because the rewards are so generous.
3) Scanning and cosmic signatures
When a new player gets more into the game and discovers scanning, PvE content leading to cosmic signatures is great. Data/Relic sites are taught in career agents and I think the devs have done a pretty good job at the tutorial for this, but I still found myself scratching heads and looking for help when it comes to scanning, especially on dscanning and probe scanning.
