Those eager to broadcast to the world the thrilling experience of hitting a tree with your fists will be happy to know that Minecraft's 1.7.3 update will be available in pre-release starting next week thanks to an updated blog post, bringing with it the anticipated Twitch streaming built-in.

Eager streamers will be in need of a computer running at least Windows Vista and higher and Mac OS X Lion (10.7) and higher to actually stream their gameplay to the world, and Mojang has offered up a small guide on how things will work.

Before you can start streaming, you will need to visit your Mojang account settings and link a Twitch account to your Mojang account. Then in the game you may check the quality settings in Options -> Broadcast Options, or just go ahead and start broadcasting at any time by hitting F6. This key can be configured in the Controls options.

It isn't all about the streaming with this update either, with a number of bug fixes and tweaks coming through as per usual for Minecraft's patches. The update will also fix render distances set above eight in single-player games, though sadly this may not work in multiplayer servers.

Minecraft's partnership with Twitch was previously announced back in early November at the annual Minecon event.